Carly Fiorina's controversy over HP printers sold in Iran, explained

Like several other Republican candidates, Carly Fiorina has made President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran a key part of her presidential campaign. Fiorina has described the agreement as a "very dangerous deal," because it opens up the Iranian economy without getting US inspectors sufficient access to Iranian nuclear facilities.

Yet in recent days, Fiorina has faced criticism for her own past dealings with Iran. Specifically, when she ran Hewlett-Packard, the company indirectly sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment — mostly printers — in Iran. She claims that she didn't know about the sales and didn't violate sanctions laws. But the reports, which have been circulating at least since her 2010 Senate campaign, makes it awkward for her to strike a hawkish pose on the Iran issue today.

Since 1995, the US has had a sanctions regime that imposes strict limits on US companies selling their products in Iran. The sanctions are intended to pressure the Iranian regime to improve its human rights record and abandon its efforts to get a nuclear weapon, among other objectives.

HP didn't sell its products in Iran directly, but a lot of HP products wound up being sold there anyway. A 2008 Boston Globe investigation explained why:

In 1997, two years after President Clinton banned trade with Iran, HP struck a partnership with a newly formed company in Dubai to sell its products in the Middle East. At the time, the company, called Redington Gulf, had only three employees and its sole purpose was to "sell HP supplies to the Iran market," says a history on Redington Gulf's website and Rajesh Chandragiri, the administrative manager in Redington Gulf's Dubai office.

Redington Gulf maintained offices and a service center in Tehran, and licensed Iranian retailers to sell HP printers in their stores. The result: one poll found HP was the leading printer brand in Iran, with a 41 percent market share.

There's also evidence that HP personnel — thought not necessarily Fiorina personally — were aware of the extent of HP product sales inside Iran. The San Jose Mercury News has reported that in 1999, "the company's Middle East general manager was quoted in a United Arab Emirates English-language newspaper calling Iran 'a big market for Hewlett-Packard printers.'"

The Globe investigation prompted an SEC investigation into HP's dealings with Iran, leading HP to sever ties with Redington Gulf in early 2009. At the time, HP estimated that sales of HP products in Iran were around $120 million in 2008, a tiny fraction of HP's $118 billion in worldwide revenues that year.

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