U.S. Lobby Group Seeks MTN Pullout From Iran

WSJ — South Africa's flagship telecommunications company MTN Group Ltd. said Friday that it won't pull out of Iran after it became the target of an influential U.S. lobby group campaign seeking the exit of foreign businesses in the country.

MTN has a 49% stake in Iran's second-largest mobile phone operator and 21% of its subscriber base is from the country, according to its most recent figures.

The lobby group's campaign comes as the U.S. and Europe are enacting new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

In a letter sent to MTN's Chief Executive Sifiso Dabengwa this week seen by Dow Jones Newswires, Mark Wallace, the president of lobby group United Against Nuclear Iran and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said MTN is enabling the Iranian government to track and locate cellphone users which it says is a violation of human rights. The group wants the company to either scale back in Iran or exit the country.

MTN's spokesman said on Friday that the company continues to monitor events in Iran but reiterated it is "business as usual" in the country. MTN has a strong base in the Middle East and has operations also in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

South Africa's department of international relations said the government is still debating its stance on sanctions against Iran. The country relies on Iranian oil for about a quarter of its crude oil imports.

South Africa's Minister of Communications Dina Pule said earlier this week that her department wouldn't put pressure on MTN to pull out, even if countries from Europe or the U.S. tried to lean on the company.

While MTN says it is staying put, South Africa's Sasol Ltd., the world's biggest liquid fuel producer from coal, said it is starting to diversify oil sources away from Iranian imports. And Sasol repeated this week that it is still considering an exit from its 50% share in a $900 million Iranian petrochemical project.