Even though Iran’s mobile phone infrastructure was crucial to the ability of Iranians to send to the outside world video, still images and first-hand reports of the events in Iran, Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham think it’s a good idea to impose sanctions on two European companies that provided equipment used by Iran’s mobile phone infrastructure. The rush to pitchforks and torches was occasioned by a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that revealed that Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint-venture of the German and Finnish telecom equipment giants, provided equipment that the Iranian government was using to monitor mobile telephone and Internet communications. A spokesman for the joint venture indicated that the technology provided to Iran was intended for lawful intercepts, a capability provided by the joint-venture and other companies to telcom providers around the world, including the United States. Lawful interception capacity is built into telcom networks to enable interception of communications relating to child pornography, drug trafficking, terrorism and other criminal activities.

Schumer and Graham are proposing to introduce legislation tomorrow that would require U.S. government contractors that export “sensitive technologies” such as the intercept technology to Iran to terminate relationships with Iran before applying for new contracts or renewing existing contracts. The proposed legislation allows the President to waive the restrictions as long as the reasons for the waiver are reported to Congress. If, as Nokia Siemens Networks claims, the intercept capability is inherent in all networking equipment, the Graham-Schumer proposal could have the counterproductive effect of slowing the growth of Iran’s mobile telephone system. At this point, that would seem to benefit the currently embattled Iranian regime to the detriment of ordinary Iranians as well as dissidents in Iran seeking to communicate with the outside world.

Ironically, Schumer and Graham appear not to realize that they might do more for Iranian dissidents and the ordinary Iranian in the street by limiting sanctions rather than increasing them. As we noted in an earlier post, current sanctions, as interpreted by OFAC, arguably prohibit the provision of social networking and similar services, such as Twitter and Facebook, to Iranians, even though these services have been essential to allowing the flow of information from Iran to the rest of the world. More good could be done by legislation expanding and clarifying the information and telecommunications exception to make provision of Twitter, messaging-services, Facebook, YouTube and the like to private citizens in Iran clearly and unambiguously legal.

More U.S. computer chips have been sighted in Iran, this time some AMD Opteron Dual Core microprocessors that the Aerospace Research Institute of Iran (“ARI”) touts it has incorporated into what passes for a supercomputer in Iran. The ARI is affiliated with the Iranian government and conducts research on missile technology.

A spokesman for AMD states that he’s “shocked, shocked” to discover that there are AMD chips in Iran. Actually he said that the company complies with all export laws and he has no idea how the company’s chips wound up in Iran, a statement that is likely true in the sense that AMD does not know which of its distributors broke its distribution agreement and sold AMD product to Iran. But generally speaking, AMD, like everyone else, knows how the chips wound up in Iran. The unmentioned two-ton elephant sitting in the corner of the parlor is — are you ready? — named Dubai.

Back in December 2007, this blog reported that Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran had announced that it had used 218 AMD microprocessors to build what it called a “supercomputer” with a theoretical peak performance of 860 gigaflops. (Real supercomputers measure peak performance in hundreds of teraflops, so this was frankly a rather anemic supercomputer.) AMD issued pretty much the same press release at the time, indicating that it complied with U.S. export laws and had no idea how its chips wound up in Iran.

A little bit of investigation by this blog and we found a picture of Amirkabir assembling the computer complete with pictures of boxes for the AMD chips bearing the logo of Thacker, a company based in — surprise, surprise! — Dubai. Thacker also did its best imitation of Captain Renault and purported to be shocked that its products had wound up just across the Strait of Hormuz in Iran.

This time AMD has indicated that it is going to inform the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) that it has learned that ARI’s website claimed that it had used AMD chips to build a computer. That is, of course, the right thing for the company to do, but I wonder what such a disclosure is called. It’s not what BIS would normally call a “Voluntary Self Disclosure.” Perhaps we should call it a “Voluntary Somebody Else Disclosure”?

[Hat tip to Patrick Thibodeau at Computer World for breaking this story.]

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