Last Friday, the UAE announced it’s long-promised export law. The new law not only forbids the unlicensed export of “strategic goods” including military hardware, CBW precursors and dual use items but also creates a catch-all exception that would allow the UAE government to ban other exports that it deems a threat to the country’s “national security, foreign policy, natural resources, public health and safety or the environment.” The announcement of the new law is part of the UAE’s response to continuing complaints from the United States that sensitive exports to Iran have been funneled through the UAE.

The ink on the new law was scarcely dry before Iran chimed in to denounce the law:

The U.S. pressure on the UAE is in the direction of the same illegal U.S. policy against Iran in the past and beyond the U.N. resolutions,” said Mohammad Ali Hosseini, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

…

Iran’s most widely circulated newspaper, Hamshahri, warned in its editorial Sunday that trade restrictions would hurt Iran, the UAE and other Mideast countries.

“Putting Iran’s economic interactions in danger would mean economic risk for many countries,” said the paper. “Under the circumstances, the UAE would not be able to repeat its economic boom years.”

Since the U.A.E. law doesn’t forbid all exports to Iran, the hue and cry from Tehran seems an implicit concession that defense articles and dual use items are indeed being funneled to Iran through the UAE.

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