House seeks to divest funds from Iran
By Vladimir Shvorin
The Jewish Advocate
April 25, 2008
Estimates suggest that by 2010, Iran will have the knowledge and resources needed to produce a nuclear weapon. Massachusetts House Bill 4270, supported by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, is intended to impede Iran’s progress towards that goal by directing the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management board to divest approximately $20 million worth of investments from 20 companies.
Among the 20, international companies such as Repsol and Royal Dutch Shell have been publicly known to have business dealings with Iran’s energy sector, which is responsible for supporting the country’s nuclear weapon aspirations.
The bill is co-sponsored by Massachusetts Rep. Tony Cabral and Sen. Joan Menard, and endorsed by Rep. Richard E. Neal and U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, among others.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is aggressively pursuing nuclear technology in violation of its international safeguards agreement. And Iran has recently announced that it had completed work on 6,000 centrifuges in defiance of mandatory U.N. Security Council resolutions.
According to the JCRC report, “Iran has assembled roughly 1,600 working centrifuges”- necessary to produce nuclear weapons- as of July 2007, meaning that they’re more than halfway to wards the total number needed to produce enough uranium for a weapon by some estimates. In addition, with nuclear capability, “Iran would be free to intensify its aggressive campaign against the West,” the repot said.
Five states have already enacted Iran divestment legislations, including California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, and New Jersey. Other states are in the process of finalizing their efforts. Maryland recently passed a divestment bill in the state’s Senate, and in the House, by a vote of 147 to 3. The overwhelming support for the bill thus far, in-state and out-of-state, makes the passing of House Bill 4270 a foregone conclusion in Massachusetts.
During an April 11 hearing at the State House, those opposing the bill claimed that it is a political gesture and that Iranians would use tactics such as divestment as rallying cry for more violence.
Co-chair Cabral strongly expressed his disagreement against this and other anti-divestment viewpoints during the hearing.
Speaking directly to a person that just presented their view against the bill, he explained that, “[Bill 4270] is the only weapon we have to influence Iran. You are able to testify against the bill because you’re in a free government. If you were in Iran, you wouldn’t be able to do that because would be killed or imprisoned."
