Who knew with both the advent of a nuclear accord between the U.S., other major world powers, and Iran and the Republican primary season in high gear that U.S. economic sanctions would be newsworthy?

Yet, with a Republican debate scheduled for tonight, one of the leading stories going into it is the apparent “flip-flop” of candidate Carly Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett Packard. According to Bloomberg View, despite Fiorina’s recent protestations against lifting sanctions on Iran as part and parcel of the recent nuclear accord, “under her leadership [at HP], Hewlett-Packard sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of products to Iran through a foreign subsidiary, despite strict U.S. export sanctions.”

Ignoring the question of what explains Fiorina’s alleged “flip-flop”, the more interesting item is how Hewlett Packard sold printer products to Iran under Fiorina’s reign and what it means for the pending general license authorization for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies doing business in or with Iran.

At the time of HP’s transactions with Iran, U.S. persons, as defined in 31 C.F.R. § 560.314, were prohibited from engaging in the export, re-export, sale, or supply of goods, technology, or services to Iran or the Government of Iran. This included the “exportation, re-exportation, sale, or supply of any goods, technology, or services to a person in a third country undertaken with knowledge or reason to know that such goods, technology, or services are intended specifically for supply, transshipment, or re-exportation, directly or indirectly, to Iran…”

As an entity incorporated under U.S. law, HP was subject to the prohibitions of the ITR (the former “Iranian Transactions Regulations”, superseded by the “Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations”) and in apparent violation of 31 C.F.R. § 560.204 to the extent that it sold printers and printer inks to a distributor based in Dubai that it had reason to know then re-exported those same products to Iran, which was the original allegation in the Boston Globe’s 2008 story on HP’s activities in Iran.

However, as related in HP’s response to the SEC’s questioning in 2009, the background facts of the Globe’s story err in one fundamental way: HP’s sales to the UAE-based distributor originated from HP’s foreign subsidiary and not from HP itself. This fact is critical to an appropriate legal analysis, insofar as 31 C.F.R. § 560.215 – which subjects U.S.-owned or –controlled foreign entities to the ITSR’s sanctions prohibitions to the same extent as it does a U.S. person — was not yet law and, as such, there were no additional restrictions on the ability of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies to engage in activities with Iran that would be otherwise prohibited if the U.S. parent engaged in the activity directly.

HP’s filing with the SEC goes into some detail as to the legal underpinnings of its sales to Iran. According to HP, “all known sales of HP’s products into Iran involved sales by Hewlett Packard Europe B.V., a Dutch subsidiary, through its Meyrin Branch located in Geneva, Switzerland.” Neither HP Europe B.V. nor Meyrin Branch was a U.S. person “within the meaning of 31 C.F.R. § 560.314 of the ITR,” thereby rendering the ITR’s sanctions prohibitions inapplicable “to the sales of products by The Meyrin Branch to Redington Gulf and the other distributors authorized to sell for redistribution into Iran.”

These sales were conducted by the Meyrin Branch, which sold printers and related parts and supplies to third-party distributors in the Middle East and North Africa region, including to Redington Gulf. Some of these products were then distributed to Iran, though they were “limited to printers and printer supplies that were authorized for redistribution into Iran under the [Export Administration Regulations].” (Whether the printer products being exported to Redington Gulf were U.S.-origin goods or contained enough U.S.-origin product to be considered such is not addressed in HP’s filing to the SEC, though it could potentially have caused significant legal trouble.)

As such, according to HP’s filing, the sales of HP’s printer products to Iran adhered to U.S. sanctions and export control laws, insofar as they were carried out by a foreign subsidiary of Hewlett Packard not otherwise subject to the ITR and engaged in an activity permissible under the EAR. Moreover, to the extent that such sales were permissible under the ITR, they did not involve in any manner U.S. persons – including Carly Fiorina, then-CEO of Hewlett Packard – facilitating or otherwise approving the activities of HP’s foreign subsidiary. Claims that HP made “hundreds of millions of dollars” of sales to Iran during Fiorina’s tenure is accurate but misleading, as Fiorina herself and all other U.S. persons part of the HP corporate family were likely not in any way involved in these transactions.

This tale is all the more interesting, though, due to the light it sheds on the pending license authorization for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies. Under the nuclear accord with Iran, the U.S. is obligated to provide license authorization for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to engage in activities “consistent with the JCPOA.” While all indications from OFAC are that the scope of this license authorization has yet to be worked out, one can predict that we will settle back to a pre-TRA era in which foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies were engaged in trade-related activities with Iran so far as those activities did not otherwise violate U.S. sanctions and export control laws.

In other words, Bloomberg View might not know it, but the world they described is the one we’re returning to, where HP’s foreign subsidiaries can trade with Iran while remaining compliant with U.S. sanctions and export control laws. It’s a world we just recently left and one we’ll soon be returning to; let’s see if tonight’s Republican debate takes note of it.