The [...]]]> Cigarettes, Wrigley’s chewing gum, Louisiana hot sauce, weight-loss remedies, body-building equipment, and sports rehabilitation equipment. These are just some of the items which, thanks to a lengthy investigative article published by The New York Times, we now know are exempt from the “biting” sanctions which the Barack Obama administration has imposed against Iran.

The Times explains that:

Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.

But Jo Becker, Ron Nixon and William Yong’s Times article never produces any evidence to suggest that trade with Iran — or any blacklisted country — has actually worked against U.S. interests of pressuring the Iranian leadership to end its alleged nuclear program.

Stuart Levey, the Obama administration’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at Treasury, calls out the absurdity of the reporters’ forensic level interest in sanctions loopholes. He tells The Times that their focus “misses the forest for the trees.”

And the American Popcorn company defended itself against its decision to avail itself of sanctions loopholes.

Henry Lapidos, export manager for the American Pop Corn Company, acknowledged that calling the Jolly Time popcorn he sold in Sudan and Iran a humanitarian good was “pushing the envelope,” though he did give it a try. “It depends on how you look at it — popcorn has fibers, which are helpful to the digestive system,” he explained, before switching to a different tack. “What’s the harm?” he asked, adding that he didn’t think Iranian soldiers “would be taking microwavable popcorn” to war.

The reporters didn’t find any solid evidence that the sanctions loopholes had directly helped either the Iranian nuclear program or the Iranian Republican Guard Corps (IRGC). But they did track down details of how a medical-waste disposal plant in Honolulu may have exerted political influence to gain an exception for its contract for 200 graphite electrodes from a Chinese government-owned company which had been penalized for providing missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.

The Times put a lot of effort into proving, once again, that people in capitalist societies have an incentive, and some would say a responsibility, to seek access to foreign markets. None of the companies listed in the article are exporting weapons to Iran or North Korea, an activity that might be of legitimate concern to U.S. national interests.  Instead, they were participating in free trade. Iran, an active member of the global economy whether the West likes it or not, presents a desirable market for U.S. companies wishing to export products.

While The Times is quick to portray this trade in a negative light — they failed to mention that Israel, a country whose leadership has repeatedly called Iran an “existential threat” continues to import Iranian marble. So the main takeaway from the article appears to be that U.S. companies have no particular desire to curtail their foreign trade with Iran.

The ongoing lesson of the attempts to impose sanctions on Iran are that Iran is more than capable of substituting its Western trade relationships with trade from South America, Africa and Asia, and that no one outside of a small community of Iran-hawks and sanctions architects appear very concerned about the limited trade between the U.S. and Iran.

Perhaps this ongoing trade with Iran is a function of participating in a globalized economy. Sanctions are simply more difficult to implement and nearly impossible to enforce in an increasingly interconnected global trading system.

“The cables [...]]]> The U.S. media has been quick to accept that Arab countries share a hawkish view on Iran after the release of the WikiLeaks cables. The New York Times was at the front of this push to portray Arab leaders as just as hawkish as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party on Iran.

“The cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries -notably the Saudis – in a common cause,” the NYT asserted.

But Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe took a closer look at cables describing conversations with Arab leaders and found that “the Times account seriously distorted the content – and in the case of the Saudis, ignored the context – of the cables released by Wikileaks.”

They write:

In fact, the cables show that most Gulf Arab regimes – including Saudi Arabia itself – have been seriously concerned about the consequences of a strike against Iran for their own security, in sharp contrast to Israel’s open advocacy of such a strike. They also show the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait expressing that concern with greater urgency in the past two years than previously.

Porter and Lobe take apart the NYT’s assertion that “a largely silent front of Arab states whose position on sanctions and force looked much like the Israelis,” finding that Arab leaders have expressed serious concern about the consequences of U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

They also find that Saudi language on Iran as reported in diplomatic cables—some of the harshest Arab statements regarding Iran’s nuclear program, according to the NYT—mirror the official position of the Bush administration at the time.

Former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, told IPS that such a statement would “fit a pattern of communication with the United States of ingratiating themselves with their protector.”

Porter and Lobe write:

Thomas Lippman, former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, who has written a book on Saudi-U.S. relations, also said that the Abdullah quote would have been in line with the usual Saudi pattern of “telling the Americans what they wanted to hear”.

Cables highlighted in the article also include reports on discussions with senior UAE diplomats, the most recent of which summarizes a discussion between UAE’s  foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan and a visiting congressional delegation.

Most recently, a Feb. 22, 2010 cable has the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan, warning a visiting delegation headed by Rep. Nita Lowey, a strong supporter of Israel in Congress, that any “crisis or confrontation in the region [over Iran's nuclear programme] would create oil supply problems world wide.”

According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a “soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran’s regional influence.”

They look at a number of cables describing discussions with Gulf Arab leaders and conclude:

While confirming growing Arab fears about Iran’s regional clout and nuclear ambitions, the cables suggest that other Gulf Arab leaders – with the possible exception of Bahrain’s King Hamad, the only regional leader with a majority Shi’a population – have little or no appetite for military action against Iran.