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Oct

2

Maybe They Can Fly the Flag of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick?

Posted by Clif Burns at 6:38 pm on October 2, 2012

IRISL Vessel The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) is running out of countries to flag its ships in its increasingly futile efforts to avoid U.S. sanctions on the company. Even Tuvalu, the fourth smallest country in the world, deregistered 44 IRISL oil tankers recently. (That’s rather like being ejected from an Olive Garden restaurant in Dothan, Alabama.)

A Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) that appeared on September 28 details IRISL’s current woes in using the flags of convenience of two land-locked countries, Mongolia and Moldova, the latter a country most-renowned for its frequent utility as an obscure crossword puzzle entry. Moldova had begun to cancel IRISL registrations but those ships quickly obtained registrations from Mongolia. Now Mongolia is announcing that it will deregister the ships.

Of course, an IRISL vessel is subject to sanctions no matter what flag it is flying, but IRISL is hoping to confuse people by using flags of convenience rather than an Iranian flag for the ships. An IRISL spokesman is quoted by the Journal on the company’s rather quaint theory of reflagging its ships:

“When you push someone from a room, he should find a door,” said Ali Ezzati, Irisl’s manager for strategic planning and international affairs, on the sidelines of a shipping conference in Xiamen, China. “If he can’t find a door then he should try to find a small hole.”

I suppose that his choice of metaphors here was uninformed by the fact that small holes are the way that rats and cockroaches get into a room. I think I would have gone for window.

And, as is often the case when journalists not normally on the sanctions beat try to tackle sanctions issues, the Journal story has an amusing whopper about the Iran sanctions. The article explained that the Iran sanctions “are tied to money transactions with bank and trade services.” Er, no. All transactions with Iran are prohibited (with the exception of certain otherwise authorized transactions such as those involving food, medicine and informational materials) whether or not any money is paid and whether or not they involve “bank or trade services.” I wonder how many people will read the article and figure that the regulations don’t prohibit dealings with Iran if no payments are made. Sigh.

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Sep

26

Brits Target Propofol Exports to U.S.

Posted by Clif Burns at 7:01 pm on September 26, 2012

Category: Foreign Export Controls

The United Kingdom’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills (UK-BIS) recently released a notice to exporters with regard to exports of propofol from the U.K. to the United States. Propofol is probably best known these days as the sedative that cancelled Michael Jackson’s final tour. But the export ban is not the result of any special solicitude for The Gloved One or other substance-abusing American pop stars. (After Amy Winehouse, I think that Great Britain would be in no position to get on its high horse about chemically dependent pop stars in other countries.)

What caused the U.K. to overlook its special relationship with the United States and instead treat us as a naughty child unworthy of one of its pharmaceutical exports were news reports that the state of Missouri planned to use propofol as part of its lethal injection cocktail when executing prisoners. There are no indications that that this action by the United Kingdom has caused the State of Missouri to reconsider its position on capital punishment. Propofol is available generically and is produced worldwide.

My favorite part of the notice is this:

This control reflects the Governmentâ€™s opposition to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. Following consultation with applicable industry and other bodies, we assessed that the trade between the UK and the USA in propofol appears to be negligible, and therefore we expect the impact on UK businesses to be low.

These moral reservations, of course, came to late to save Admiral Bing whom the British unceremoniously shot, as Voltaire said, “pour encourager les autres.” Â Best of all, these moral reservations come at no cost to British industry because, apparently, propofol isn’t actually being exported in any measurable amounts from the U.K. to the U.S. Millionaires are also similarly admirable when they state their profound opposition to stealing pennies from toddlers.

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Sep

24

ICANN See Iran from My Computer

Posted by Clif Burns at 5:44 pm on September 24, 2012

Category: General • Iran Sanctions

Institute for Research in Fundamental Science, Iran United Against Nuclear Iran (“UANI”) is at it again, and the latest windmill in its quixotic quest at ending all international commerce with Iran is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) because, apparently, Iran is still connected to the Internet and it is, apparently, somehow ICANN’s fault. In a ridiculousÂ letter that UANI sent to ICANN, which is long on outrage and short on law, UANI alleges that ICANN is violating U.S. sanctions by permitting Iranian entities to use the .ir country code top level domain (ccTLD), by assigning unique IP addresses to Iranian entities, and by providing name server services to .ir websites which permit alphanumeric web URLs to be associated with the unique IP addresses.

The UANI letter focuses on certain .ir domains held by particular Iranian entities:

Prominent sanction-designated Iranian entities have acquired .ir Unique Internet Identifiers from ICANN/IANA through the RIPE NCC. For example, Iranâ€™s nuclear brain trust, Malek Ashtar University holds the http://www.mut.ac.ir/ address.

Apparently it thinks that ICANN hands out individual web addresses. It does not. It coordinates the assignment of a block of IP addresses to RIPE, a regional internet registry (RIR) covering Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Â (The original assignment was by the Department of Commerce.) Â RIPE, in turn, designates registrars in various areas in its territory to manage and assign domain names within specific top level domains. In the case of Iran, RIPE has appointed the Institute for Research in Fundamental Science in Iran and which set up IRNIC to coordinate assignment of domain names using the .ir extension. Â So ICANN isn’t dealing with Iranian website owners or IRNIC and doesn’t have any power to shut down individual domains any more than Apple can recall an iPod that is resold from outside the United States into Iran.

At most, ICANN might be able to shut down the entire .ir domain, although I believe it would need the consent of the Department of Commerce which delegated all of its authority over Internet coordination to ICANN. But our friends at UANI purport to support ordinary Iranian citizens and their rights to access the Internet, so snuffing out the .ir top level domain would seem to be overkill. I think UANI realizes that it’s not going to get ICANN to shut down the .ir top-level domain or any particular domain names in Iran. Instead, UANI’s goal here is more likely simply to get news coverage by throwing around its baseless charges about ICANN.

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Sep

19

Time Machine Used to Export Ammo to Libya

Posted by Clif Burns at 3:26 pm on September 19, 2012

Category: Arms Export • Foreign Export Controls

Exports of defense articles to repressive Arab regimes by the United Kingdom have re-ignited a debate as to whether Parliament should have the right to approve certain defense — or should I say “defence”? — exports utilizing a process similar to the Congressional notification procedure required by the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. To illustrate a story on this debate, The Guardian used the photo below, allegedly showing ammunition that was found in Benghazi and had supposedly been exported from the U.K. to Gaddafi in Libya prior to Gaddafi’s final stand.

Guardian Photo

A reader points out the ammo box bears the markings of the Imperial Chemical Industry Metals Division. But before you get out your pitchforks and torches and storm the gates of that company, you should understand that the Imperial Chemical Industry Metals Division ceased to exist in 1962, when it was renamed Imperial Metal Industries Ltd., as you can read here on IMI’s website.

So one of three things happened here. IMI was sending stuff out in 60-year-old wooden crates with the wrong name on it. Or, perhaps, someone at Imperial Chemical Industries had a flux-capacitor equipped DeLorean in 1960 and drove the ammo through time and space to Benghazi, Libya, in 2010. Or, finally, the editors at the Guardian were knocking down pints at the local pub when they should have been on Google.

We report, you decide.

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Sep

17

ZTE and Huawei Proclaim Innocence During House Hearings

Posted by Clif Burns at 5:38 pm on September 17, 2012

Category: Iran Sanctions

Huawei HQ Last Thursday the House Intelligence Committee held hearings into whether or not two giant Chinese telcom equipment companies — ZTE and Huawei — had shipped U.S. origin goods to Iran in violation of the U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. ZTE told the committee that it had never sold equipment to the “Iranian government,” apparently feeling that this was some defense to sales that it apparently made to state-owned telecom companies in Iran.

More interestingly, and more surprisingly, Huawei offered this novel interpretation of U.S. sanctions on Iran:

Charles Ding, a senior vice president of Huawei, also testified Thursday. He said the only equipment his company has sold to Iran was for â€œcommercial, civilianâ€ use.

Of course, U.S. sanctions also cover sales of items for “commercial, civilian” use.

The report on the hearing in the Washington Post, linked above, tries unsuccessfully to give Ding the benefit of the doubt and, in so doing, commits a howler of its own.

Legal experts said it is unclear whether that would violate U.S. sanctions barring sales to Iran … . Although foreign companies have the ability to do business with Iran, federal law bars involvement by U.S. subsidiaries or the sale of goods made in the United States without special permission.

Apparently the reporter is trying to suggest that if these sales were made by Huawei, and not one of its U.S. subsidiaries, everything would be hunky dory. Uh, no. If the items had more than 10 percent U.S.-origin content, then even foreign companies are not permitted to sell those items to Iran. You have to wonder what legal “experts” the Post reporter consulted.

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