House Republicans are pressing Boeing’s CEO about the company’s reported deal to sell aircraft to Iran, raising the possibility that Boeing effectively could be arming the Islamic republic.
“American companies should not be complicit in weaponizing the Iranian regime,” Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois and Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas wrote in a letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg sent Thursday.
Boeing is reportedly working toward a deal to sell Iran $17 billion of aircraft over a decade. The transaction was made possible by the deal struck between Iran and world powers last year, an Obama administration official explained Thursday.
The Republicans, however, warned Muilenburg that Iran, still identified as a state sponsor of terror by the U.S., would likely use commercial aircraft to aid terrorist groups or “hostile actors,” such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian regime.
“Those terrorist groups and rogue regimes have American blood on their hands,” the congressmen wrote. “Your potential customers do as well.”
Roskam, the chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, and Hensarling, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, asked Boeing to detail the assurances it has had in negotiating the deal that it has not been interacting with terrorists and that its products would not benefit terrorists.
They also touched on another politically tense topic, namely the Export-Import Bank, the export credit agency that Boeing lobbied hard to resurrect last year and that Hensarling has sought to shutter on the grounds that it represents corporatism.
Given uncertainty about how Iran would finance the aircraft purchases, the congressmen asked whether the Export-Import Bank would be involved. Ex-Im, as it’s known, provides loans and credit guarantees to foreign purchases of U.S. products.
