We have followed the fight for freedom in Iran for a number of years and recently spent a day reporting from Channel One TV here in Southern California, which broadcasts their signal via satellite inside the repressive regime. As we start to see reports leak out of country-wide protests (because Tehran cuts off access to reporters and even their own people), we hear about support from an unlikely ally. California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is helping those fighting for democracy from thousands of miles away and in quite a unique way.
“I’m in a position where I can help put additional financial pressure on Iran to change this country’s behavior which is dangerous to its own citizens and to that national security of this country,” says Poizner.
California is the fourth largest insurance market in the world and although insurance companies here can’t do business directly with the Iranian Regime, many invest in companies that do. Poizner’s solution is to force them to divest, by refusing to allow insurers to count those investments toward their state-mandated bottom line. According to the Commissioner, 350 insurance companies in California have about 6 billion dollars of investments that are propping up the Iranian Regime.
Sam Sorich from the Association of California Insurance Companies says, “We’re a little surprised because insurance companies obey the law, they obey the state and federal laws that regulate investments in any companies that are doing business in Iran.”
Over the course of the last few years I have also also spoken with noted Stanford Professor and Hoover Institute Fellow Abbas Milani and he says, “These gestures have to cohere into a meaningful policy that does the very complicated task of hurting the regime, hurting the IRGC or the revolutionary guards , which are its means of survival.”
What do you think?