Philadelphia
A Democratic lawmaker criticized opponents of a multi-billion dollar deal between Boeing and Iran Air and urged economic engagement with the Islamic Republic Tuesday.
“I think it’s appalling that people are marching a crusade against selling Boeing airplanes to Iran,” said Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer during a panel hosted by the progressive advocacy group J Street. “That order would create about 100,000 American jobs over the next ten years.”
Blumenauer stressed the “profound opportunities” available for “economic linkage” with Iran.
“We’ve got an election coming up in Iran,” he said. “These will be positive signals, that, you know, this is a different era.”
The congressman said that “the odds are very strong that there will be change” in Iran and lamented that the U.S. opened up to Cuba too late.
“I am of the opinion that if we had, for God’s sakes, allowed people to go to Cuba for the last forty years, Fidel Castro would be a footnote. Not that he’s a nice guy, not that he didn’t want to screw things up,” Blumenauer said. “But there is power in engagement.”
Panelist Toni Verstandig, executive vice president at the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, also stressed the economic impact that the Boeing sale would have on America.
“Let there be no mistake, Boeing doesn’t sell these planes, it has such profound residual effect … it hits Ohio really, really hard,” she said, after acknowledging that the Islamic Republic still supports “major international terrorism activity.”
Another panelist, Ilya Sheyman, argued for the jet deal based on the danger Iranian citizens face when traveling on domestic planes.
“Iran has some of the most dangerous domestic flights of any country in the world,” Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.org, said. “That doesn’t take a genius to know that if your family suffers in a plane crash, you are going to hold responsible those who are preventing you from buying planes.”
Critics of the Boeing agreement have expressed concern that Iran Air will use the planes for terrorism. The airline was sanctioned by the Obama administration in 2011 for transporting weapons on behalf of Iranian-linked terror entities, like Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
The House successfully passed bipartisan legislation in early July that would block the sale.
