Scandal-plagued Halliburton, the oil services company once headed by Vice President Dick was secretly working with one of Iran’s top nuclear program officials on natural gas related projects and, allegedly, selling the officials' oil development company key components for a nuclear reactor, according to Halliburton sources with intimate knowledge into both companies’ business dealings.
Just last week a National Security Council report said Iran was a decade away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. That time frame could arguably have been significantly longer if Halliburton, which just reported a 284 percent increase in its fourth quarter profits due to its Iraq reconstruction contracts, was not actively providing the Iranian government with the financial means to build a nuclear weapon.
Now comes word that Halliburton, which has a long history of flouting U.S. law by conducting business with countries the Bush administration said has ties to terrorism, was working with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of the board of directors of Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies, on oil development projects in Tehran. Nasseri is also a key member of Iran’s nuclear development team.
“Nasseri, a senior Iranian diplomat negotiating with Europe over Iran's controversial nuclear program is at the heart of deals with US energy companies to develop the country's oil industry”, the Financial Times reported.
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Why doesn't this surprise me?
Saturday, September 09, 2006
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Halliburton was doing the same thing in both Iran and Iraq when Cheney was the top dog there, in spite of the sanctions against both countries. Corporations in the U.S., including Halliburton, also did a lot of dealing with Iraq in the 1990s through their European subsidiaries. When the secret "oil-for-food" scandal was finally exposed, Americans heard only that the U.N. and European corporations were guilty. They weren't told that many of those corporations were subsidiaries of U.S. corporations.
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