Friday 29th of March 2024

Halliburton Reactor Sales To Iran From Al Jazeerah 9/10/2005

Halliburton, the scandal-plagued oil company, that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run, sold an Iranian company key components for a nuclear reactor, Halliburton sources revealed.

Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000, during which Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran.

Halliburton, which sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian Government, was secretly aiding one of Iran’s top nuclear program officials on natural gas related projects and provided the official's oil development company with the components last April, the sources said.

FARS, one of Iran's many state controlled news agencies reported last month the arrest of several executives of the Oriental Oil Kish Company, which is owned by sons and other relatives of the defeated mullah presidential candidate Hashemi Rafsanjani, saying that the men were involved in widespread corruption of Iran's oil industry, specifically tied to the country's business dealings with Halliburton.

According to a report posted on the Iran Press News website: "They were brought up on charges of economic corruption". “Following the necessary investigations by the judiciary's bailiffs, with warrants from the public prosecutor's office, the case of economic corruption and malfeasance, certain of the authorities of Oriental Kish Oil Company have been arrested and under questioning.  The head of the board of directors was also among those detained.”

Halliburton, with a history of violations of U.S. law by conducting business with countries the Bush administration claims are supporting “terrorism”, was working with Cyrus Nasseri, vice chairman of the board of directors of Oriental Oil Kish, on oil and natural gas development projects in Tehran, registered in the United Kingdom and Dubai. Nasseri, a key member of Iran’s nuclear development team, participated in Iran’s nuclear negotiating with the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

According to a report published by the Financial Times: “Nasseri, a senior Iranian diplomat negotiating with Europe over Iran's nuclear program, is at the heart of deals with U.S. energy companies to develop the country's oil industry”.

“A reliable source stated that, given the parameters, the close-knit cooperation and association of one of the key members of the regime's nuclear negotiation team with Halliburton can be an alarm bell which will necessarily instigate the dynamics of the members of the regimes' negotiating committee,” according to the Iran Press News story.

In late July, Nasseri was questioned for passing Iran’s nuclear secrets to Halliburton and receiving $1 million in bribes from the company, Iranian government officials said. 

According to Iran Press News, a huge network of oil mafia was uncovered during investigations.

Halliburton sources revealed that the company sold Iran centrifuges and detonators to be used specifically for a nuclear reactor as well oil and natural gas drilling parts for well projects to Oriental Oil Kish.

Halliburton’s business with Oriental Oil Kish first surfaced in January, when the Iranian company said that it gave some contracts of the South Pars natural gas drilling project to Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Halliburton.

Later on, Halliburton said the South Pars gas field project in Iran will be the its last project in the country, “due to a poor business environment,” according to BBC.

In May and under mounting pressure from lawmakers in Washington, Halliburton decided to end its deals with Nasseri, but continued acting as an advisory capacity to his company.
 
Currently, the U.S. law doesn’t prohibit foreign subsidiaries from having business with what President Bush calls “rouge” nations as long as the subsidiaries are truly independent of the mother company.

But Halliburton’s Cayman Island subsidiary never did fit that description.

According to a February 2001 report in the Wall Street Journal, “Halliburton Products & Services Ltd. works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block.  A brochure declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is non-American.  But, like the sign over the receptionist's head, the brochure bears the company's name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units around the world.”

Rearguard action

From Getting serious about terror

... OK, here’s my strategy for defeating Islamic terror at its roots and democratizing the Arab Muslim world:

1. First, find an empty beer bottle.

2. Next, I want all Republicans and Republican media mouthpieces like yourself, Sully, to start telling everybody that this empty beer bottle is actually full of terror! When people question whether there is really any terror in the bottle, deride them as unserious, or as being terrorist sympathizers, traitors, anti-Semites, or whatever. When pressed to prove that the bottle is actually full of terror, admit that, well, maybe you can’t meet every nit-picky courtroom standard of proof on this, but terror can’t be defeated unless we understand about unknown unknowns and all that. I mean, maybe the bottle isn’t really 100% full of terror. But here’s the thing: CAN WE AFFORD TO TAKE THAT CHANCE!?!?!

3. Having identified where terror is, there is only one thing to do. Andrew Sullivan, I want you to eat that glass bottle. ...

From A Few Bad Men:

... Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core," Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem." ...

From Petition urges ban on flag burning:

... "We've got to make sure that our flag, the Australian national flag, our greatest national symbol, is protected from people who would see it desecrated or destroyed in anyway," he said.

You go, Bruce-boy! But I think I will pass on the sticky date pudding.