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Despite its sanctions and trade embargoes Tiffany, the U.S. government has over the past decade allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, The New York Times reported on Friday.
"At the behest of a host of companies -- from Kraft Food and Pepsi to some of the nation's largest banks, a little-known office of the Treasury Department has granted nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving countries that have been cast into economic purgatory, beyond the reach of American business," the report said.
It said most of the licenses were approved under a decade-old law mandating that agricultural and medical humanitarian aid be exempted from sanctions. But the law, pushed by the farm lobby and other industry groups, was written so broadly that allowable humanitarian aid has included cigarettes, Wrigley's gum, Louisiana hot sauce, weight-loss remedies Wedding dresses, body-building supplements and sports rehabilitation equipment sold to the institute that trains Iran's Olympic athletes.
"Hundreds of other licenses were approved because they passed a litmus test: they were deemed to serve American foreign policy goals," the report said. "And many clearly do, among them deals to provide famine relief in North Korea or to improve Internet connections and nurture democracy in Iran."
Examination by the newspaper also found cases in which the foreign-policy benefits were considerably less clear. In one instance, an American company was permitted to bid on a pipeline job that would have helped Iran sell natural gas to Europe, even though the United States opposes such projects.
Some diplomats and foreign affairs experts worry that by allowing the sale of even small-ticket items with no military application, the United States muddies its moral and diplomatic authority.
"It's not a bad thing to grant exceptions if it represents a conscious policy decision to give countries an incentive," Stuart Eizenstat, who oversaw sanctions policy for the Clinton administration when the humanitarian-aid law was passed Tiffany Rings, was quoted as saying. "But when you create loopholes like this that you can drive a Mack truck through, you are giving countries something for nothing, and they just laugh in their teeth. I think there have been abuses."