American companies unknowingly killed US troops

Iran is using front companies to purchase electronic equipment from US companies to build their IED’s. The same IED’s that have killed US troops in Iraq.

The Iranian businessman was looking for high-quality American electronics, but he had to act stealthily: The special parts he coveted were denied to Iranians, especially those seeking to make roadside bombs to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

With a few e-mails, the problem was solved. A friendly Malaysian importer would buy the parts from a company in Linden, N.J., and forward them to Iran. All that was left was coming up with a fake name for the invoice. Perhaps a Malaysian engineering school? “Of course, you can use any other company as end-user that you think is better than this,” the Iranian businessman, Ahmad Rahzad, wrote in an e-mail dated March 8, 2007.

The ruse succeeded in delivering nine sensors called inclinometers to Iran, the first of several such shipments that year and the latest example of what U.S. officials and weapons experts describe as Iran’s skillful flouting of export laws intended to stop lethal technology from reaching the Islamic republic.

Despite multiple attempts by the Bush administration to halt illegal imports — including sanctions against several Dubai-based Iranian front companies in 2006 — the technology pipeline to Tehran is flowing at an even faster pace. In some cases, Iran simply opened new front companies and shifted its operations from Dubai to farther east in Asia, the officials said.

What’s so frustrating is that when these companies are caught purchasing these parts and forwarding them on to Iran, they are shut down but they open up again under a different name. It’s so difficult to track these front companies because the internet is such a wide open, nebulous, malleable space. Anyone can be anything they want to get what they want.

If this is enough to terrify you, just wait. It gets worse:

Many of the schemes unknowingly involve U.S. companies that typically have no clue where their products are actually going, the records show.

“The schemes are so elaborate, even the most scrupulous companies can be deceived,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and co-author of a forthcoming study of black markets for weapons components.

Albright said the deceptions can be even more elaborate when the target is nuclear technology. “That’s where the stakes are the highest,” he said. “If Iran is successful, it ends up not with an IED but with a nuclear weapon.”

How would the American employees and owners of a US company feel if they found out too late that an Iranian nuclear bomb used on, say Israel or – gulp – us, was made possible by parts supplied by their company?

Link via Hot Air