This article was published in the Indian Pugwash Society's in-house journal Proliferation and Arms Control, Vol. 3, no. 3, March 2006, pp. 1-5.
As reported in The Washington Times and The New York Times the United States has recently imposed sanctions on nine firms worldwide, which includes two Indian firms under the Iran Nonproliferation Act 2000, for supplying chemicals that the US claims could assist Iran’s chemical weapons program. However, there is more to it than what meets the eye in the recent US decision [1]. The list of sanctioned companies includes six Chinese firms, two Indian firms and an Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher, which makes high-quality assault weapons. The sanctions have been imposed under section 3 of the Iran Nonproliferation Act, which Congress passed in 2000 to deter international support for Iran's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and missile-delivery systems [2]. The sanctions run till December 2007 and bar the companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prohibit U.S. firms from obtaining export licenses to sell sensitive products to these companies. However, a closer look of this issue is warranted because not all the facts of the case match up. Especially, in the case of the Indian companies it seems as if the State Department could have its concerns misplaced.
The Facts of the Case
The two Indian companies that were sanctioned are Sabero Organic Chemicals Gujarat Ltd. and Sandhya Organic Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. The Federal Register does not mention any details about the materials that were transferred. However, things do look amiss when one gives a brief glance to the media reports as well as the press releases of the two Indian firms. The press releases put out by the two firms does list out the chemicals that were exported by them. Sandhya Organic Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. had exported approximately 1.5 MT of Phosphorus oxychloride – POCl3 and Sabero Organic Chemicals had exported 112 MT of Tri-Methyl Phosphite (TMP) in 2003 to Raja Shimi Industrial Manufacturing Centre, Iran. Both these chemicals come under the Schedule III of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). [3]
Phosphorus oxychloride like Tri-Methyl Phosphite is a chemical weapons precursor. Both these chemicals find a mention under Section III of the CWC. This is mainly due to the widespread recognition of the fact that these chemicals have a lot of innocuous industrial uses. Apart from this even the Australia Group [4] that follows the CWC classification places these chemicals under Schedule III. [5]
Interestingly, even under the US export classification system the two chemicals are listed under Schedule III. [6] This brings up the question of the rationale behind sanctioning the Indian companies in the first place. Why does the U.S. need to sanction two Indian firms for supplying material that they themselves do not see as dangerous? One question that needs to be asked is whether the US sanctions are a reflection of the paranoia surrounding Iran that exists in the United States.
Understanding the Iran Nonproliferation Act 2000
Given this information it is imperative that the Iran Nonproliferation Act 2000 be studied a little closer. It was on 14 March 2000 that President Clinton signed the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, which authorizes him to take punitive action against individuals or organizations known to be providing material aid to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in Iran. By appending his signature on the Act, President Clinton thus ended a two year long stand off with the U.S. Congress on the issue. Earlier, Clinton had vetoed a 1998 version of the bill that focused on missile proliferation to Iran because it required the imposition of sanctions on Russian entities unless the president determined that a waiver of sanctions was "essential" to U.S. national security. The administration argued that the legislation, the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act of 1998, would harm the administration's effort to garner Russian cooperation on a wide range of proliferation issues. [7]
