By Nell Gluckman, From The Am Law Daily

It may still be illegal for most U.S. and European businesses to do business in Iran, but it’s not premature for their lawyers to begin dissecting the nuclear deal that was announced earlier this month. If approved by Congress, some of the sanctions and compliance rules that have stifled the Iranian economy for years will be loosened.

Partners at Am Law 100 firms say their clients are inquiring about whether the accord, reached between Iran and six world powers including the U.S., means they will soon have access to the large and developed Iran economy.

“Now that the deal has been announced, I’ve already been in touch with a number of clients,” said Anthony Patten, a project development and finance partner at Shearman & Sterling who works with oil and gas companies. Patten said his clients are particularly interested in Iran because of the large oil and gas reserves there.

“No one can afford to miss out in terms of what’s happening there,” said Patten, who joined Shearman & Sterling’s Singapore office last year from Australian legal giant Allens, where he headed the latter’s Asian oil and gas team.

Shearman & Sterling has a long history working in Iran. The firm represented Citibank during the Iran hostage crisis 35 years ago. In a secret plan that took months to negotiate, Shearman & Sterling partner John Hoffman and Citibank general counsel Hans Angermueller worked out a deal that allowed Iran to use frozen assets to pay off its creditors in exchange for the release of American hostages. (Angermueller, a former Shearman & Sterling partner, passed away at 90 on July 11.)

Danforth Newcomb, an of counsel at Shearman & Sterling serving as the sanctions specialist in the firm’s Iran working group, said he tells clients nothing can be done in Iran yet, but it’s not too soon to get ready.

“Refresh your rolodex,” he said. “Reestablish old connections.”

European companies, who could do business in Iran until the European Union adopted economic sanctions similar to those invoked by the U.S. in 2012, could be better positioned than their U.S. counterparts, many of whom have not operated in Iran in nearly 40 years.

“I believe a number of the energy companies have tried to keep [connections] alive on a quiet basis,” said Newcomb. “Some of the European automakers have as well.”

Newcomb said that the energy, automobile and aerospace industries are most likely to benefit from the lifting of sanctions, but that there may also be demand for a broad array of consumer goods in Iran. He said he’s even received a call from a wax manufacturer.

Jonathan Epstein, an international trade partner at Holland & Knight in Washington, D.C., who focuses his practice on the aviation and maritime industries, pointed out that aircraft parts suppliers have been able to sell to Iranian airlines since early 2014 when an interim measure was passed.

If the new deal is approved, however, U.S. companies may be able to lease passenger fleets in Iran.

“But the word ‘lease’ raises a whole set of other issues and risk analysis,” Epstein said. “No Western leasing company has leased an aircraft in Iran in 40 years. When you lease equipment, you’re worried about your ability to repossess.”

Though the prospect of new or renewed business partners is exciting to many businesses, William McGlone, a Latham & Watkins partner in Washington, D.C., who specializes in export controls, likens the advice he’s had to give his clients to a cold shower.

“The core of those sanctions remains in place,” said McGlone, co-head of Latham’s export controls, economic sanctions and customs practice. “The easing is incremental and really quite gradual.”

But he added that for him, watching how the political and policy issues continue to evolve and shape the sanctions laws has been fascinating.

“It’s a very dynamic time,” McGlone said. “It’s complex.”

One prominent Am Law 100 lawyer has already been quite vocal in expressing his opposition to any agreement with Iran.

Joseph Lieberman, a former vice presidential candidate and longtime U.S. senator from Connecticut who joined Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman as senior counsel in 2013 (a move motivated in part by family ties), has broken with politicians in his home state to criticize concessions made by the Obama administration in reaching a deal with the Iranians.

Lieberman, who also wrote an op-ed in the Hartford Courant urging Congress to reject the accord and try again, has joined an advocacy group backed by pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC working with other lobbyists to muster political opposition.

“This Iran deal is dangerous for America, for Israel and for the world,” Lieberman wrote in a statement on the website of Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. “We need to reject this deal and demand a better one—an agreement that dismantles Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.”

Photo by Borna Mirahmadian/iStock

For more on this story go to: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202733049824/Clients-are-Asking-About-Iran-But-Lawyers-Remain-Cautious#ixzz3h6KJH2gT