WASHINGTON – A subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Cheney ran between 1995 and 2000, won a contract this week to develop a much sought-after oil and gas field in Iran, a country accused by the White House in recent months of covertly developing nuclear weapons.

A Halliburton spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, confirmed to The New York Sun yesterday that the subsidiary, Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., won the contract first announced on Iranian TV to develop phases nine and 10 of the south Pars oil and gas field. The Halliburton unit, headquartered in Dubai, is reportedly the target of a grand jury investigation regarding possible violations of an executive order barring American companies from substantial investment in Iran’s energy sector.

“Halliburton’s business is clearly permissible under applicable U.S. laws and regulations,” Ms. Hall said. “These entities and activities are staffed and managed by non-U.S. personnel. If Congress decides to change the laws and provisions, Halliburton will, of course, comply.”

Yesterday, the Agence France-Presse news agency quoted Pars Oil and Gas Company’s managing director, Akbar Torkan, announcing on state TV that Halliburton and an Iranian concern, Oriental Kish Co., won the final bid to drill in the oil and gas fields located on a field bordering Qatar. The Pars field is believed by industry analysts to be one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.

The news wire quoted an anonymous official with Mr. Torkan’s company as saying the deal was worth $310 million. Ms. Hall said in an e-mail, however, that she believed the quoted figure was higher than the actual deal. She did not provide further details.

Mr. Cheney, who was the chief executive officer of Halliburton, came under considerable fire from Democrats during the campaign season for his ties to the oil services giant. In the last year, government probes have been launched regarding not only HPSL, but also Halliburton business dealings in Nigeria, where the company allegedly bribed government officials to secure winning bids.

According to an October 21, 2003, report from Halliburton to the managers of the pension funds for the New York City police and fire departments, the total earnings from Halliburton’s business in Iran represents 0.5% of the company’s total revenues. HPSL does between $30 million and $40 million annually in oilfield service work in Iran, the report said. That work consists of “cementing, completions work, downhole tools and well testing, stimulation services, PDC drilling bits, coring bits, fluids logging, and the provision of drilling fluids.”

In the late 1990s, when Mr. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he was one of the harshest critics of President Clinton’s unilateral sanctions against Iran. At this time, Halliburton became one of the founding members of an industry lobbying group, USA Engage, devoted to ending bilateral sanctions against rogue states. Upon assuming office, Mr. Cheney surprised many of his former colleagues when his task force on energy policy declined to recommend the lifting of the 1995 executive order that prohibited American businesses from investing in Iran’s oil and gas sector in a task force report on energy policy that he authored.

“With respect to these current reports, the facts have yet to be determined,” a spokesman for the State Department, Kurtis Cooper, said yesterday. “From a policy perspective, however, we have long stated that we do not believe U.S. or foreign firms should be helping Iran develop its oil industry, so long as Iran refuses to set aside its nuclear weapons ambitions and continues with other destabilizing policies.”

Under the Iran Libya Sanctions Act, the State Department can deny foreign and domestic companies access to American capital markets for investing more than $40 million in Iran’s energy sector. While the law has rarely been enforced, another State Department official yesterday told the Sun that Foggy Bottom is “developing more information. We are looking into this.”

The Treasury Department, which has jurisdiction over the executive order specifically barring American oil companies from doing business with Iran, had no comment. “Separately incorporated foreign subsidiaries are not included in the definition of U.S. persons in the current U.S. executive order. We are not commenting on the individual cases,” a Treasury Department official said.

One of the original sponsors of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act, Rep. Elliot Engel, a Democrat of New York, said the White House should launch a new investigation into these reports. “I am calling on the president and vice president to open an investigation into this matter and publicly condemn Halliburton for doing business with a nation that has American, Israeli, and other innocent people’s blood on its hands,” he said.

The president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, also criticized the company Mr. Cheney used to head. “It certainly sounds as though Halliburton is violating, if not the letter of the law, at least the spirit of the law,” he said. “Most important, this regime that is ruling Iran needs to know that there will be severe repercussions if it goes ahead with nuclear weapons, but that there are clear incentives if it forgoes that option.”

The Halliburton deal was also a hot topic yesterday on many of the Iranian based Web logs that are committed to the new movement to hold a popular referendum on their country’s constitution. One Iranian-American activist, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, said the timing of the deal was terrible. “An American company such as Halliburton should know better to continue these investments in Iran at the same moment when the Bush administration is trying to get European companies doing this kind of business to pressure the regime through threats of divestment,” she said. Ms. Zand-Bonazzi is the daughter of an Iranian journalist and political prisoner, Siamak Pourzand.