U.S. steps up prosecution for arms sales to Iran

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WASHINGTON: Taken together, the inventory reads like a Pentagon procurement order: replacement parts for American-made fighter jets, nightvision goggles, submachine guns, rifle scopes, global positioning devices, even electronic circuit boards capable of detonating explosives remotely.

But the buyers were not Defense Department officials in Washington, they were Iranian agents in Tehran who, in dozens of purchases over the past two years, have exploited a global black market to obtain sophisticated equipment from the United States, American intelligence officials say.

The problem is as old as the founding of the Iranian regime itself three decades ago, as Iran has proved an aggressive suitor for U.S. military goods to replace the aging fleet of jets and weapons supplied by Washington before the fall of the shah in 1979. The difference now is that American intelligence officials say Tehran has developed bold new methods to evade detection through international front companies, and U.S. officials have pushed back with an invigorated effort to cut off the supply and prosecute American exporters and middlemen.

At a time of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran, the American initiative has produced a spike in criminal prosecutions against at least 70 individuals and companies over illegal exports to Iran since late 2006, many involving military components, according to Justice Department data.

The latest break - and one of the most significant - came Wednesday, officials said, with the unsealing of a federal indictment in Miami charging 16 people and companies overseas with illegally shipping thousands of microchips and other sophisticated, American-made electronics to Iran in violation of a 1995 ban.

American officials assert that some of the parts were used to build roadside bombs in Iraq.

In the case, American officials charged that Iranian citizens in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere used unwitting American electronics manufacturers to route the "dual use" equipment, which can be used for either military or commercial purposes, to Iran. No one in the United States was implicated in the scheme.

The latest case "details the global reach of Iranian procurement networks," said J. Patrick Rowan, chief of the Justice Department's national security division, "and underscores, in dramatic terms, the importance of keeping sensitive U.S. technology out of their grasp."

The effort, part of a broader effort to use more aggressive tactics to stop illegal exports globally, is not without its critics. The American campaign has caused nervousness among some manufacturers of important technology; one industry group warned in a newsletter last week that the conviction this month of a Tennessee professor for providing military data to a Chinese citizen showed a need to "minimize the threat of criminal liability" and avoid "a criminal fine of $1,000,000!"

Some legal experts see the government's effort as part of a broader campaign to treat standard criminal matters as national security breaches.

Eric Dubelier, a former federal prosecutor who handled export violations cases and who is now in private practice, said in an interview that he believed that a minority of the recent prosecutions involving exports to Iran represented legitimate threats to national security. Many of the prosecutions, he said, were "knuckleheads who got caught up in some sort of sting" by U.S. law enforcement officials.

"You wonder if these are real national security cases," he said. "But now you have this whole theory that all these exports can be tied in to terrorism and 9/11."

Current and former officials said they realized the potential for political manipulation of information about Iran's military ambitions, particularly after the faulty intelligence about Iraq that preceded the 2003 invasion.

But John Clark, a former senior career official in the Department of Homeland Security's customs operation who oversaw exports cases, said the Iranian issue "wasn't politicized at all," with no pressure from the White House or political appointees at the department to bring cases.

Clark, who left the government last year for the private sector, said he was surprised that the administration did not seek out more publicity as the Iranian cases began to mount.

With the indictments in Miami, the Justice Department has now brought criminal export cases involving Iran against at least 70 people and companies since October 2006, compared with about 42 cases in the two years before that.

The Commerce Department levied civil penalties totaling $1.28 million against companies for exporting goods to Iran in 2007 and about $252,000 so far this year, department data showed. The government has expanded the number of Iranian-linked companies and organizations restricted from doing business with the United States, with the Commerce Department adding 75 entities to its list Wednesday and the Treasury Department adding five.