[Free Beacon] International businesses across the United States and Europe are making a beeline to exit the Iranian marketplace ahead of the reimposition of harsh U.S. sanctions that Trump administration officials have been warning will target any company that defies America's call to cut ties with the Islamic Republic, according to multiple U.S. officials briefed on closed-door meetings held over the past months.U.S. diplomats have been holding a series of meetings with top international business and banking leaders to spell out the Trump administration's new sanctions policy, which will come into full force in early November.
Since the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal, 31 European and Asian firms in the Global 500 have announced their intention to exit the Iranian market. Those companies include "France’s Total, Airbus, and PSA/Peugeot, Denmark’s Maersk, Germany’s Allianz and Siemens, Italy’s Eni, Japan’s Mazda and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, and BP from the United Kingdom," according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Multiple insiders familiar with these discussions told the Washington Free Beacon the Trump administration has been making clear that if anyone sides with Iran‐and a handful of European nations are angling to keep ties with Iran open‐they will be smacked with some of the harshest sanctions in recent memory.
Major banks and corporations had been plotting with some European allies to skirt the new restrictions prohibiting business with Iran, but are said to have ceased these efforts in recent weeks after tough warnings from top U.S. diplomats, sources said.
The meetings are being held as former Obama administration officials and their allies hold a series of counter meetings aimed at helping European nations and top companies skirt Trump's new sanctions. This rogue diplomacy‐including that of former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has held a series of meetings with top Iranian diplomats‐is being met with indignation by the Trump administration, which has accused the former administration and its allies of running a shadow diplomacy campaign aimed at undermining Trump.