According to this report in the Wall Street Journal, the State Department asked Twitter to delay again a previously scheduled downtime on the service because of unfolding events in Iran. Twitter itself had delayed the first scheduled downtime. Twitter, however, ignored State’s request to delay the downtime again, cryptically noting in its blog that “the State Department does not have access to our decision making process.”

But where is the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) in all of this? The current sanctions seem to prohibit California-based Twitter from providing its services to people in Tehran or anywhere else in Iran. The Twitter service sets up for each user a micro-blogging page that contains each of his or her “tweets.” This goes far beyond the narrow interpretation OFAC has of both the telecommunications exception and the information exception in its Iranian Transactions Regulations. Certainly if it is OFAC’s position that providing ISP services in Iran must be licensed, providing micro-blogging hosting services would require a license as well.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not advocating that OFAC rush in and shut down Twitter in Iran. But this instance shows the absurdity of applying comprehensive, rather than targeted sanctions, against Iran as well as the absurdity of OFAC’s narrow interpretations of the telecommunications and information exceptions. OFAC should define telecommunications services to cover all or most Internet-based services (including instant messaging, blog hosting, VOIP telephony). Similarly, the information exception should be broadened to include provision of any services by which information can be transmitted to or from Iran. Otherwise, OFAC’s regulations will have the unintended effect of supporting the Ahmadinejad regime’s goal of suppressing dissent in Iran.

One wonders whether OFAC and the State Department had any discussions about Twitter in Iran. And to be completely fair to OFAC, I’ve spoken informally with some people at the agency that are fully aware of, and concerned that, broad application of OFAC’s sanctions against private citizens in Iran might not be the best idea if it results in squelching the expression of dissenting views within the country.

Related ExportLawBlog Posts:

• U.S. Export Laws Block Access to Website on Crisis in Darfur
• On the Internet You Can Be From Anywhere You Want
• Web Host Uses OFAC Sanctions To Boot Dissident Bloggers
• Microsoft Shuts Off IM Service in Sudan and Other Sanctioned Countries
• It Wasn’t Me, I Swear

ABOVE: Hamid Borhani
Chairmain, Bank Saderat

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Back in March, I reported that Ali Divandari, Chairman of Iran’s Bank Mellat, suggested that the privatization of that bank might lead to the end of U.S. sanctions against it. Now Divandari’s colleague, Hamid Borhani, Chariman of Iran’s Bank Saderat, another sanctioned bank, takes this wishful thinking one step further. In an interview this weekend with Dow Jones Newswires, Borhani said that once the privatization of Bank Saderat is complete, he’s coming to the United States to meet with OFAC. Not so fast, Kemosabe!

Even in the alternate universe where Borhani would be given a visa and where he would have unblocked funds to finance his trip, privatization won’t erase the reasons that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) sanctioned Bank Saderat. When OFAC announced its imposition of sanctions on Bank Saderat, it stated:

Bank Saderat … is used by the Government of Iran to transfer money to terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A notable example of this is a Hizballah-controlled organization that has received $50 million directly from Iran through Bank Saderat since 2001.

Privatization won’t erase that.

In the interview, Borhani said that he had written three letters to OFAC, none of which (not surprisingly) had been answered, and that this is why he wanted to travel to DC to parley with OFAC. Although Borhani didn’t reveal the contents of these letters in the interview, their contents can be easily determined through earlier news stories, such as this one:

US claims that Saderat funded radical groups were baseless, he said. The London-based Bank Saderat, which holds strategic investments, and the bank’s five branches in Lebanon had never transferred money to militant groups, as the US alleges.

He challenged Washington to reveal its documents and reply to the three letters he had sent to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control along with documents, in one case exceeding 1,000 pages.

It wouldn’t be idle speculation for me to suggest that Borhani wants to see the documents relied on by OFAC to see who exactly dropped the dime on him. And sending 1,000 pages of documents, that was a nice touch. “Here, OFAC, look at this one. It’s another document on which there is no evidence that our London branch made that transfer. And, look, 999 more without such evidence.” Sending the Tehran phone book to OFAC would have been equally persuasive since none of its pages has any evidence of the transfer either.

I have to think that Borhani is not being serious here and that this is all just political theater for the benefit of the bank’s remaining customers.

The Washington Times published an editorial today advocating that a French pharmaceutical company be denied access to the U.S. market because it allegedly sold “raw botulinum toxin” to Iran. The company, Ipsen, is seeking to market two Botox-alike cosmetic drugs, including Dysport, in the United States that are pending FDA approval, and the newspaper is arguing that the FDA-approval should be withheld because of these sales. In that regard, the editorial endorses legislation introduced this March by Sen. Sam Brownback, and targeted at Ipsen, which would prohibit FDA approvals of drug applications by companies that sold in Iran products that “contain” botulinum toxin.

In researching these allegations by the Washington Times, it became clear that not everything in the editorial adds up. First, there is no substantiation of the claims that Ipsen is selling raw botulinum toxin to Iran. Rather it appears that the concerns that led to questions about approving Ipsen’s products for the U.S. market arose from this report documenting Ipsen’s sale of Dysport to Iran, which although it contains small amounts of Type A Botulinum toxin can’t be accurately characterized as “raw” botulinum toxin. In fact, Dysport is the most widely used Botox substitute in Iran. The low concentrations of the toxin in the drug make it an unlikely choice as a building block for a biological weapon.

Production of raw botulinum toxin is quite easy. Recipes can be found on the Internet and require only basic media to grow the toxin. And there is substantial evidence that Iran has already produced botulinum toxin as part of its CBW program. In light of this, it seems unlikely that cosmetic preparations containing botulism toxin can make a significant contribution to Iran’s bio-weapons program. Or that Iran would even buy raw botulism toxin for its bio-weapon program on the open market.

Other statements in the editorial suggest that the Washington Times might be playing somewhat loose with the facts. For example, the editorial states:

Botulinum is one of the most lethal biological agents in the world. Under certain circumstances, a single gram can kill more than a million people.

Compare this with the following statement from the somewhat more authoritative Journal of the American Medical Association‘s article on botulism as a bioterror agent:

Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult.

There are plenty of things that other countries are selling to Iran that should give rise to some concern. Crow’s feet medicine isn’t among them.

The bid by the United Arab Emirates for American assistance in developing and implementing nuclear energy facilities has raised, once again, the role that the U.A.E plays in the transiting of American goods to Iran. U.S. lawmakers have threatened to block a deal that would permit such cooperation pointing to the U.A.E.’s poor record in export enforcement.

An article just posted on the Wall Street Journal‘s website quotes the response of a U.A.E. official to these charges:

U.A.E. officials say that in the past they have been lax in monitoring the flow of sensitive technologies through the ports. But they say they have stepped up enforcement of U.N. sanctions against Iran and tightened business-license regulations for Iranian nationals. They have also signed on to U.S.-led efforts to track air and sea shipments to Iran.

Over the past three years, U.A.E. officials say, they have shut down 40 Iranian companies operating in Dubai over either export-control violations or lack of proper licenses. In the past six months, Emirati authorities have also blocked more then 10 shipments of goods for potential military use heading to Iran through Dubai, largely from Asia. “We will not allow anyone to use our territory to harm anybody else,” said Yacub al-Hosani, a Foreign Ministry official.

These numbers of shut-downs and enforcement actions, if true, are not in themselves terribly impressive. More importantly, this crack-down is only on exports of certain proliferation and military technologies, but have no effect on the U.A.E.’s role as the transit point for other exports that evade the United States’ comprehensive sanctions against Iran. What this means is that U.S. exporters must still exercise particular due diligence with respect to their exports to the U.A.E. to obtain assurance that the final destinations of these shipments are not in Iran.