Kerry Rebuts Claims That U.S. Is Undercutting Iran Trade and Investment

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/world/middleeast/john-kerry-iran-sanctions.html

Version 0 of 1.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday rebutted complaints that the United States is impeding others from investing and trading with Iran despite the easing of sanctions against that country under the nuclear agreement that took effect in January.

Mr. Kerry said that some businesses were misusing the United States as an excuse.

Many big banks and companies in Europe and Asia have hesitated to engage with Iran, partly for fear of inadvertently violating non-nuclear American sanctions that remain in effect against the Iranians, including severe restrictions on their use of the dollar.

The hesitancy has angered Iran, which agreed to wide restraints on its nuclear activities under the deal and had expected a huge lift to its economy in return, an outcome that has yet to happen. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has accused the United States of stealthily subverting the agreement, an assertion that American officials have denied.

In a meeting with a small group of reporters in London, where he was preparing to meet with European bankers, Mr. Kerry acknowledged “some confusion” about the rules under the agreement, but he said that the United States was happy to explain them.

“Iran has a right to the benefits of the agreement they signed up to, and if people by confusion or misinterpretation or, in some cases, disinformation are being misled, it’s appropriate for us to try to clarify that,” Mr. Kerry said in the meeting. A transcript was posted on the State Department website.

Mr. Kerry also suggested that some companies were using the American sanctions that remain in force as a guise for not venturing into Iran. “They shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because of the United States,’ ” Mr. Kerry said. “That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate. And we sometimes get used as an excuse in this process.”

The system of American sanctions on Iran, he said, is “just not as complicated as some people make it.”

Mr. Kerry also rejected suggestions that the next American president would scrap the nuclear agreement. Many Republican politicians have denounced the agreement, including Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. The two Democrats competing for their party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have expressed support for it.

“I just don’t believe that a new president regardless — is going to suddenly say, ‘Let’s go have a war in the Middle East,’ and give up the restraint on a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Kerry said. “I just don’t think the advisers to that president or anybody are going to suggest that that makes sense.”

Still, the agreement has done little to ease the atmosphere of hostility and suspicion that has prevailed between Iran and the United States.

The Iranians have since seized on other American actions they view as arrogant affronts, including a Supreme Court ruling last month that cleared the way for the use of impounded Iranian assets to compensate American victims of attacks attributed to Iran.

Iran is also likely to be irritated by a federal lawsuit filed against it on Monday by Amir Hekmati, the Marine veteran who was among the imprisoned Americans released by the Iranians when the nuclear deal went into effect four months ago.

The lawsuit, filed by Mr. Hekmati’s lawyers in Washington, is seeking unspecified damages for Mr. Hekmati’s four-and-a-half-year incarceration and torture in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Mr. Hekmati has said that the charges under which Iran detained him were fabricated.

“Our intention, with the filing of this lawsuit, is to attempt to provide at least some measure of justice for Amir and his family,” Mr. Hekmati’s lawyer, Scott D. Gilbert, said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment on the lawsuit from Iranian officials. But Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has described any American court proceedings against Iran as a violation of international law.