Samsung has just announced that, as of May 22, it is shutting off access from Iran to its mobile phone app store. The move, announced in an email to customers, was somewhat vague about the reason for the decision, citing only “legal barriers.”

I’m not so sure what those “legal barriers” are that would mandate shutting down the store entirely. To begin with, Samsung, which is  headquartered in South Korea, is not a U.S. person and isn’t subject to U.S. sanctions on Iran. One can be quite sure that no U.S. persons are involved in Samsung’s dealings in Iran, particularly since Samsung appears to want to continue to sell its phones and other electronic devices in Iran.

Even more perplexing, of course, is trying to reconcile the company’s stance with the general license issued by OFAC in 2010 authorizing the export to Iran of certain services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet. The guidance issued by OFAC on that general license makes crystal clear that “free mobile apps related to personal communications” fall within the license. The guidance also announces “a favorable licensing policy” for license applications to permit export of paid mobile apps relating to personal communications to Iran.

Perhaps the real culprits here are the Angry Birds, the Bad Piggies, and the Fruit Ninjas. It is probably safe to say that these popular mobile device games, whether free, freemium or paid, do not relate to personal communications over the Internet and aren’t covered by either the general license or the favorable licensing policy. Rather than sanitizing the store by eliminating those pesky games, Samsung just decided to chuck the whole thing. And, of course, there may also be practical reasons why it was hard to keep the fingerprints of U.S. persons employed by Samsung off the app store.

Needless to say,  it is highly doubtful that whether the Samsung app store is open or closed will have any impact at all on Iran’s nuclear proliferation activities.

Back in December,  Standard Chartered Bank paid $227 million to settle charges by the Federal Government that it had improperly processed financial transactions destined for Iran. Earlier this month, John Peace, the Chairman of the Bank, said at a year-end results press conference that the whole business with the Iran fine was the result of “clerical errors” and not the result of willful acts by bank employees. Then all hell broke loose.

So last week the company issued a formal stock market announcement in which Peace took it all back, ate his words, and did everything short of donning sackcloth and ashes and walking to Wall Street to be flogged by U.S. government officials. The spelling mavens and junior detectives at The Guardian found the orthographic fingerprints of U.S. influence on this apology:

The statement appeared to demonstrate the influence of the US regulators by containing American spellings “willful” and “apologize.”

In fact, and without need to resort to orthographic peculiarities of American spelling, the reason for Peace’s contrition can be clearly found in the deferred prosecution agreement that Standard Chartered signed.  Paragraph 12 of that agreement is a “muzzle” clause and provides:

SCB expressly agrees that it shall not cause to be made, through its attorneys, board of directors, agents, officers, employees, consultants or authorized agents (including, contractors, subcontractors, or representatives), including any· person or entity controlled by any of them, any public statement contradicting the acceptance of responsibility by SCB set forth above or the facts described in the Factual Statement. Any such public statement by SCB, its attorneys, board of directors, agents, officers, employees, consultants, contractors, subcontractors, or representatives, including any person or entity controlled by any of them, shall, subject to the cure rights of SCB set forth below, constitute a willful and material breach of this Agreement as governed by Paragraph 9 of this Agreement, and SCB would thereafter be subject to prosecution pursuant to the terms of this Agreement.

In short, it seems clear that the U.S. threatened prosecution and Standard Chartered exercised its cure rights to avoid being in the unenviable position of having paid $227 million dollars and still be prosecuted for its violations of U.S. economic sanctions laws. Still, you have to wonder what legitimate purpose a muzzle clause has other than to soothe the sensibilities of government regulators.