President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran hasn’t halted international companies from working with Iran. It has, however, given Chinese and Russian companies a substantial advantage in securing these deals, at the expense of the European companies that had been getting them.
State-backed companies in both Russia and China have been aggressively pursuing contracts with the Iranians in recent weeks, while European companies that already had some deals, like France’s Total S.A. and Germany’s Siemens have been very cautious.
This caution, in spite of the EU promising to block US sanctions, is costing these companies in the process of getting the contracts. The Russian and Chinese companies both seem to have a lot more faith in their respective governments both keeping the Iran deal intact and keeping the US from targeting them.
This could be a double-edged sword for Iran, however, as while they secure important deals with Russian and Chinese companies, the EU may find it has less financial interest in the deal, and less inclination to stand up to President Trump’s attacks on it.
‘compete’ is a misleading word, fire sale is more accurate.
Companies doing business in Iran already got favorable terms because of the risk premium of the U.S. blowing things up (figuratively and possibly literally). The Iranians have to greatly discount their assets and terms to get whatever companies are left to do business in their country and the cost of doing business has gone up.
What if we expended this effort to a country like Saudi Arabia?
Think of how much money would actually be diverted away from terrorism instead of this false crusade against Iran. Even if the KSA didn’t bank roll terrorism directly (I am saying IF), it should be obvious that the Wahhabist nut jobs are getting financing and resources from the the oil wealth from the KSA and other Gulf States.
When the US and Israel blow up Iran as they’ve been itching to do for decades, they will see blowing up Russian and Chinese investments as an added perk: war to artificially improve the economic competitiveness of US companies. They will not take seriously the possibility that Russia or China will defend their investments and thus start a major world war. One of these days they will be wrong about that, just like the US was wrong about what the Chinese would do when US forces invaded N Korea all the way to the Chinese border. US forces were nearly exterminated around the Chosin reservoir during the Korean War.