By FRANKLIN LAMB
Latakia, Syria
Recent reports from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the accuracy of which have been admitted by the White House but denied in Tel Aviv, have it that around half of Syria’s chemical weapons have left the country. One hundred percent are believed to have been neutralized, which would make Syria well along the path to meeting the agreed June 30 discard date.Both Iran and Russia have been credited with helping persuade the Syrian government that it was in the interest of the global community, as well as Syria itself, to discard its 1970s-era stockpiles. A total of 11 consignments have been shipped, the latest from Latakia, including all of Syria’s sulphur mustard gas, a blister agent that was first widely used in WWI.
Captain Clyde Chester Lamb, the father of this observer, was a victim of the deadly gas while fighting the Germans in frontline trenches in eastern France. Capt. Lamb survived that ordeal, and later, upon one of those rare occasions when he opened up and spoke about his wartime experiences, told his horrified children, at story-time one night, that he and his fellow soldiers had not been supplied with gas makes; instead they had improvised, he said, by urinating on scraps of uniforms that he would pass out to his men with instructions that they hold them tightly over nose and mouth. Somehow their pee seemed to reduce the effects of the poisonous gas.
Despite some delays due to security and logistical issues, few besides the Zionist lobby in the US Congress doubt the work of removing Syria’s chemical stockpile will be completed. Across the Syrian countryside, according to information made available to this observer, specialists have speeded up the packing and transporting of the weapons, sometimes thru rebel territory, to the port of Latakia, where Russia has supplied large-capacity armored vehicles. Russia, in cooperation with Iran, is providing security for loading operations at the port, while the US is furnishing loading, transportation and decontamination equipment. China has sent 10 ambulances and surveillance cameras, and Finland has brought to the enterprise an emergency response team in case of accidents. Denmark and Norway are providing cargo ships and military escorts to take the chemicals to the container port of Gioia Tauro in Italy. Russia and China are also providing naval escorts.
Despite Iranian cooperation with this major humanitarian project, and despite progress on the Iranian “nuclear issue,” the White House to date is waffling on its own commitments. It has extended no more than a paltry, largely symbolic, lifting of sanctions, sanctions which, it should be remembered, are targeting not only the people of Iran, but also imposing nearly unfathomable suffering upon the Syrian people.
Though the White House has yet to explain its inaction, Washington sources report that President Obama is still being pressured by Israel and its Congressional agents, and that he does not want to do more than a cosmetic lifting of any sanctions at this point. Unfortunately, this applies to medicine and medical equipment as well. The same sources also claim the White House is signaling Tehran to be patient for now.
This week, US Secretary of State Kerry assured Iran’s leadership that the US appreciates the fatwa (religious decree) issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei last month. That fatwa proscribes the production and use of nuclear weapons. Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear program, Kerry granted, and he also credited an earlier statement by Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast to the effect that Khamenei’s declaration is binding for the nation.
“There is nothing more important in defining the framework for our nuclear activities than the Leader’s fatwa,” Mehman-Parast said.
But a recent prosecution of an American citizen by the Zionist-dominated Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC), an office within the Treasury Department, illustrates the weak knees of the Obama White House. At the time of his arrest, Mohamad Nazemzadeh was a research fellow in the Neurology Department of the University of Michigan. He is accused of violating the sanctions by seeking to ship a medical device to Iran which his lawyers argue was legal under the humanitarian exceptions specified in Obama’s executive orders—orders which, by the way, were drafted by AIPAC and OFAC.
There are many cases similar to Nazemzadeh’s, and Obama is aware of them, or should be. In the view of Cliff Burns, a Washington lawyer and law professor, what is at issue in the Nazemzadeh case is a coil for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The coil is the assembly of wires that generates the necessary radio signals, when electricity flows through them, to permit imaging the part of the body within the coil. Mr. Nazemzadeh is currently doing research at the Henry Ford hospital in Detroit, and his area of specialty is, not surprisingly, magnetic resonance imaging.
“A part for an MRI machine would, under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, be eligible for an export license notwithstanding the embargo on Iran,” Burns explained. “Nazemzadeh’s failure to obtain a license would, of course, be a violation of the embargo.”
Even assuming that it was, technically speaking, a violation, one has to wonder why, as Burns does, the Obama Administration’s prosecutorial resources are being consumed to indict a researcher for nothing more than trying to send life-saving medical equipment to Iran. As one of Nazemzadeh’s lawyers put it, “Aren’t there dangerous people out there with guns and bombs who might warrant the attention instead?”
An affidavit in support of a search warrant for Nazemzadeh’s mobile phone casts doubt on whether the medical researcher actually had the criminal intent necessary to justify an OFAC-driven prosecution in the first place. According to the affidavit, Nazemzadeh was negotiating with an undercover federal agent, sent in by OFAC, on the achievability of shipping the MRI coil to Iran via a company in the Netherlands. It is not uncommon for people to believe (incorrectly) that if it’s legal to ship an item to a particular country, no laws are broken if the item is then re-exported to a prohibited destination. Here, according to the affidavit, Mr. Nazemzadeh continued to say to the undercover agent that he believed the transaction was legal, that he believed this because the export from the United States was to the Netherlands, not Iran. Mr. Nazemzadeh’s good faith legal mistake is not a criminal act. Instead, this is precisely the sort of case that would have been handled as an administrative matter were OFAC anywhere near fair-minded or objective. At maximum, the Treasury enforcers should have issued a fine in the case.
If the White House truly wants to normalize relations with Iran and Syria it has got to do a lot better than this. It has to call off its attack dogs—the OFAC enforcers who are servicing interests other than those of the American people. Otherwise America’s relentless pitching of presumed “humanitarian sanctions against Iran and Syria that exempt medicines and medical equipment” is fraudulent—fraudulent because this benevolent, so-called “humanitarian” aspect has never truly been implemented, and to claim otherwise misleads the global community as to the true nature of what, in reality, are civilian-targeting sanctions imposed for political purposes.
This weekend’s White House greetings to the people of the Islamic Republic—for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in the Solar Hijri calendar—are no doubt appreciated. But now it’s time to give substantive meaning to America’s New Year’s greetings, one that her citizens can be proud of and that is accordant and consistent with their values.
Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).