According to an article by Guy Dinmore in today’s Financial Times, the UAE has escaped the ignominy of being listed on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s forthcoming list of countries “of diversionary concern.” When BIS issued an Advance Notice last month announcing its intent to fill in Country Group C of Supplement 1 to Part 740 with such countries of diversionary concern, we speculated that the UAE was BIS’s prime target.

While the UAE may have been an initial target, they aren’t anymore according to Dinmore:

Late last week Christopher Padilla, assistant secretary for export administration, told US officials the UAE would not be included in a new “country group C” designation that would require tighter US export controls to “destinations of diversion concern”.

The apparent change is an indication of the UAE’s close co-operation with Washington a year after the Dubai Ports World controversy, in which the state-owned UAE company resold its newly purchased American ports operations following staunch congressional opposition.

. . .

The decision followed talks in Washington with Sheikha Lubna al-Qassimi, the UAE economy minister, and the approval by the UAE cabinet this month of a draft law on export control.

For the conspiratorially-minded, there may be another explanation — aside from recent talks and a new export control law drafted by the UAE — of what led to BIS’s change of heart. Perhaps it was Halliburton’s recent announcement of its intention to move its offices to Dubai. Anyone think that a phone call from the office of the VPOTUS to BIS might have played a role in BIS’s decision?

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