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Activists Pushing Disinvestment in Iran

[Reuters/Washington Post] Carol Giacomo - U.S. efforts to force Iran to change its behavior have expanded beyond the White House to Main Street and threaten the broadest financial disinvestment campaign since South African apartheid ended. Momentum is growing for a movement that encourages Americans to withdraw investments in companies doing business with Iran, as well as Sudan, North Korea and Syria. "Divestment should be part of our strategy to isolate these regimes until they give up their drive for nuclear weapons and/or their support for terror," said California Democrat Brad Sherman, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on non-proliferation and terrorism. A report by the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service found more than $100 billion in energy investments in Iran since 1999 by such foreign firms as Totalfina ELF of France, Royal Dutch Shell, Italy's ENI, and Inpex of Japan. "It seems strange that we send young men and women to defend us, some of whom pay the ultimate sacrifice, however we have not yet used one of our most powerful weapons - America's financial markets," said Sarah Steelman, state treasurer in Missouri. "We in America are funding the very enemies we're fighting through our investments - billions and billions of dollars' worth," she told Sherman's subcommittee hearing last week. Steelman established the nation's first public investment fund to screen out stocks with ties to terrorism-linked firms. Since then, at least eight states - including Texas, California, and Florida - have introduced disinvestment legislation.
2007-04-23 01:00:00
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