I don’t normally talk about cases that I have been involved in on this blog, but I’m going to make a rare exception today to talk about OFAC, tennis and the new General License F announced today. The new general license permits the importation of Iranian origin services into the United States in connection with “professional and amateur sporting activities . . . including, but not limited to, activities related to exhibition matches and events, the sponsorship of players, coaching, refereeing, and training.”

The story begins with an email I received several weeks ago from Adel Borghei, a respected tennis referee from Iran who had been invited to referee at this year’s U.S. Open in New York, but the invitation had been withdrawn after he arrived in the United States due to U.S. sanctions on Iran. Section 560.505 of the Iran Transaction Regulations limits U.S. employment of persons ordinarily resident in Iran to those holding certain visas and, in the case of Mr. Borghei, appeared to preclude his being a referee at the Open.

I easily convinced Bryan Cave to take on Mr. Borghei as a pro bono client, and we filed a license application with OFAC requesting permission for him to referee in this year’s Open. And, believe it or not, we got a license in record time on the Friday before the Labor Day Weekend. Mr. Borghei, as a result, was able to referee at the Open after all. This article in the New York Times tells the story in more detail, with a great picture of Mr. Borghei arriving at the Open to get started.

Clearly the U.S. sanctions on Iran were never meant to prohibit the participation of Iranians in athletic events. Cultural and athletic interchanges involving ordinary citizens of both countries may do as much or more to further U.S. diplomatic goals as prohibitions placed on those involved in proliferation activities. And I’d like to think that the license application filed for Mr. Borghei caused OFAC to realize the good that could be accomplished by issuing General License F.

Last week I went up to the Open to watch Mr. Borghei act as a line ref for a tennis match. Regular readers have probably surmised that I enjoy what I do, but I have to admit that this one little success made all the poring over OFAC, BIS and DDTC regulations worth it. Mr. Borghei is a good guy who has always wanted to work the Open, and there he was on the line doing what he enjoyed most.

In its quest to keep the world safe from an Iranian nuclear bomb, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has focused its laser-like scrutiny on an Iranian tennis referee. Obviously, the same skills required to call a ball out or to halt a match for rain are critical to the process of uranium enrichment.

In this regard, OFAC has just fined ATP Tour, Inc. $48,600 as part of a settlement of charges that ATP had made “salary payments to an individual who is ordinarily resident in Iran … for services rendered and expenses incurred in connection with ATP tournaments the individual officiated.” The settlement documents do not reveal the individual involved but it almost certainly has to be Ali Nili, a well-known Gold Badge tennis umpire who has frequently officiated ATP and other international tennis matches.

One of the things that probably, and somewhat justifiably, hacked off OFAC is that apparently ATP made 8 payments to the Iranian referee after it had received a warning letter from OFAC about the payments. That was probably a bad idea, since even OFAC admits in the settlement papers that paying Iranian refs “represent[s] relatively low harm to the sanctions program.” You think? OFAC also indicates that the payments were probably licensable.

Another interesting area of speculation, not directly revealed in the settlement documents, is what is currently being done with Ali Nili who is still officiating ATP matches, like this one at the Shanghai Rolex Masters in 2012. I’m assuming that ATP has now in fact applied for, and received,  an OFAC license.

Not long ago, I posted on an announcement by Samsung that it was closing its app store for Iranian customers. I speculated that  paid apps were at least part of the problem because they were not covered by the 2010 OFAC general license permitting export of “services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet.”

Well, that problem has just gone away. On Friday, OFAC issued General License D which expands the aforementioned general license to cover both fee-based services and software.  It covers personal communications hardware as well, specifically mentioning, not surprisingly, “smartphones.”

That is all well and good, and certainly looks good on paper, but don’t imagine that the folks at Apple are giving each other the iFives over the prospect of selling iPhones in Iran. Nothing in General License D gets over the slight problem of how anyone actually gets paid for goods and services exported to Iran no matter how permissible those exports might be. U.S. banks cannot deal directly with Iranian banks and foreign banks, scared of potential sanctions under CISADA, increasingly refuse to deal with Iranian banks.

But if anyone wants to give away smartphones in Iran, have at it.