Yesterday the Washington Times reported that “two European companies — a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker — last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents”.

The two companies were Nokia and German powerhouse SiemensUnder their joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) they delivered what is known as a monitoring center to IranTelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.

NSN has stated that the servers were provided to IranTelecom for “lawful intercept functionality,” in other words, to allow Iranian law enforcement to tap phones, read e-mails and intercept electronic data on communications networks.

Siemens employs about 70,000 people in the United States.

While the Washington Times article did talk about the legal ramifications of engaging in these transactions, they forgot perhaps the most glaring fact of all: The sale of this equipment was done in contravention of the Iranian Transactions Regulations administed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”).

Under the Iranian Transactions Regulations (“ITR”) unless licensed by OFAC, goods, technology (including technical data or other information subject to Export Administration Regulations), or services may not be exported, reexported, sold or supplied, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located, to Iran or the Government of Iran.

But these are two foreign companies, so what does the ITR have to do with it? The ITR pertains to transactions by U.S. persons. Under the regulations a U.S. person includes:

The term person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States
includes:

(a) Any person wheresoever located who is a citizen or resident of
the United States;

(b) Any person actually within the United States;

(c) Any corporation organized under the laws of the United States or of any state, territory, possession, or district of the United States;
and

(d) Any partnership, association, corporation, or other organization
wheresoever organized or doing business which is owned or controlled by persons specified in paragraph (a), (b), or (c) of this section.

Now this does not necessarily mean that Nokia or Siemens violated the ITR. However, what it does mean is that perhaps a deeper investigation may be warranted to determine whether there was any involvement by Nokia and Siemens employees under the jurisdiction of the United States which furthered or facilitated this transaction. OFAC has not yet issued a penalty against either company for this transaction, however, it is unclear whether or not they had known about the transaction or investigated it. I would hope that in light of this week’s events and the press that this sale has gotten, OFAC would look into it.

I should also say that regardless of whether these two companies violated the ITR, Nokia and Siemens should have acted more responsibly. I understand that everyone needs to make a dollar, but the sale of surveillance equipment to a regime which has over the past 30 years proven it is willing to harm, imprison, and even kill its own citizens in order to supress political dissent is irresponsible and inexcusable. I draw the analogy to the sale of computing systems to Nazi Germany by IBM in the 1930s, in this case. What’s worse is that given the political spotlight Iran has been under for the past decade if not longer, its unfathomable how major corporations as Siemens and Nokia could allow this to go on. According to Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, “We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts.”

Hopefully, Mr. Roome was not referring to human rights law in making that statement.