Tampa attorney part of group visiting Iran

By Howard Altman

Published: October 25, 2015

Thursday afternoon, Tampa attorney John Bierley set off on a most interesting international journey.

Via a stop in Dubai, he was headed for a nation that’s been in the news of late — for, among many other things, the controversial deal to halt its nuclear weapons program.

But this isn’t about that, at least not regarding whether the deal with Iran is a good thing or a bad thing.

This is about a group of lawyers, business leaders and others exploring a nation long at odds with ours. The mission is to see what the future might hold in the realm of people-to-people and business-to-business relations.

Not that barriers are dropping. In fact, even with the agreement among Iran, the U.S, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, the ability of U.S. companies to do business with Iran will remain quite limited. This is in large measure due to long-standing preclusions, set in place because of Iranian sponsorship of jihadi activities.

“...let me be clear about what we will not be relieving,” a senior White House official told reporters, according to the White House web page. “We are not removing our trade embargo on Iran. U.S. persons and banks will still be generally prohibited from all dealings with Iranian companies, including investing in Iran...”

That is, unless you are in the food or aircraft parts or carpet businesses.

“The only adjustment we will make to those sanctions at the implementation date will be to allow the import of food and carpets from Iran and the export of civilian aircraft and parts to Iran, which has one of the worst airline safety records in the world,” said the official.

Many restrictions will remain even after the so-called Implementation Day — estimated to be sometime in the first half of next year when the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies implementation by Iran of the nuclear-related measures.

Some entities, including certain Iranian banks and energy firms, will still remain off limits because of their past support for terrorism or because they are owned by groups like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps or the Quds Force.

So for Bierley, who specializes in international law, trade and real estate, the trip is more about making connections than deals.

“You could say it is a scouting trip,” he says. “I’m not doing any business in Iran. Put it this way, I am familiarizing myself relative to what the future might be.”

Bierley says that he knows a lot of Iranians living in the U.S. who have briefed him on what to expect.

“All of them told me it will be a very pleasant experience. I should not be thinking that there is going to be any personal problems and that the Iranians are very friendly.”

He says they also told him he will be surprised at how advanced the country is “in terms of infrastructure and just the general level of development. It will be greater than I think.”

Bierley is one of several people leaving from Tampa as part of a Society of International Business Fellows trip, “offering insight into a country that is often discussed but, for political reasons, rarely visited.”

Though Iranians “warmly welcome American visitors,” challenges abound, according to the organization.

Because Iran’s political environment limits American visitors’ activities, “we are likely unable to have leading local citizens speak formally to our group; present business panels; or have dinners in private homes,” according to the organization’s website. “We will have a specific itinerary to which we are expected to adhere, with few options for wandering on one’s own.”

Women must wear loose-fitting clothing and cover their heads at all times. No alcoholic beverages are permitted, and food choices are limited.

And for the most part, U.S. currency and credit cards are no good.

Despite all that, Bierley, who at 79 remains proud he is “still in high gear,” expects to get as good a view of a country as one can in nine days.

“As a lawyer, I hope to meet some lawyers. And I hope to meet some academic personalities where I might discuss the economic and political future of doing business there.”

While the Iran nuclear deal hasn’t changed much in terms of restrictions on business, Bierley says he wants to gauge Iranian popular reaction.

“Perhaps it has changed the attitudes of some people. I have to see.”

By releasing as much as $150 billion in Iranian funds that have been tied up by sanctions, the nuclear deal may sound like a boon for Iran, but the reality, says Bierley, isn’t quite so black and white.

“It sounds like a lot of money to you and me in our pockets. But on the worldwide scale, it is not big money for a big country.”

While there is a great deal of concern that Iran will pour that money into funding jihadi activities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, Bierley says the reality is much more nuanced.

Unlike North Korea, he says, Iran is not an absolute dictatorship.

“Put it this way, they have pressures internally from various parties to do various things. Yes, they have military pressures from the Revolutionary Guards, but they also have pressures as you and I witnessed during their previous election. Any country has to pay attention to that element of its people to a considerable degree. They have a lot of more educated, affluent people.”

As an advanced nation, Iran has to take care of its roads and sewage systems and other infrastructure, Bierley says.

And while the potholes are repaired and the toilets flush in Tehran, he wonders what the infrastructure is like 300 miles from Tehran.

“What are highways like, and the drainage?” he asks. “What you are talking about is a fairly large population country. If you divide $150 billion by those people, then see there is not that much money. They have a lot of they have a lot of internal problems. They’ve been under embargo for a long time.”

Bierley and his fellow fellows will get a good chance to see a lot of the country. The itinerary calls for spending only a short time in Tehran, and a lot of time traveling about via motor coach, in large measure because the Iranian airlines are so unreliable.

He says it will be a good chance to see for himself how well, or poorly, the nation has survived the sanction-imposed economic woes.

Though this is his first trip to Iran, Bierley is no stranger to the neighborhood.

“I’ve been doing this for some 50 years now. I have had considerable experience in the Middle East.”

He lists Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Libya and Syria among countries that have stamped his passport.

“I’ve been to Palmyra where these idiots are blowing up all these things,” says Bierley, referring to the so-called Islamic State. “It is terrible. I was there only about four years ago.”

He was also in Libya “after Qaddafi came in from the cold.”

“Everything was very pleasant. You couldn’t imagine what would happen several years later when the place blew up.”

But “that is the way things are today in a lot of these places. That is one of the things I am interested to see in Iran.”

The country, he says, has diversity. Which has been known to create tension.

“The history of Iran is that there are many, many groups of people there. It is not all the same ethnic group. There are a lot of different groups of people and they need to keep them together.”

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