An excellent article titled “The Nuclear Puppet-Master” by Charlie Gillis and David Armstrong delves into the network behind Mahmoud Yadegari, a Canadian of Iranian origin who was recently convicted in Canada for attempting to transship pressure transducers through the U.A.E. to Iran without a license. Yadegari’s lawyer tried to portray him as an innocent “rube” caught up in international machinations by Iran.

Whether or not Yadegari was a “rube” — do they even have “rubes” in Canada? — everyone knows or at least suspects that in these Iranian export transactions, there is a procurement network behind the front man who actually makes the purchase of the exported goods. And the Gillis and Armstrong article goes into great detail in describing (with names) the actual network behind Yadegari.

The pattern, according to the authors, is for the Iranian government to offer money to anyone that can procure specified technology for it. Independent businessmen try to fill these orders, usually setting up a procurement network of friends and relatives outside Iran. One Canadian investigator is quoted in the article as saying that are “thousands, if not tens of thousands” of such networks, although that seems to me to be perhaps a bit on the high side.

Most interestingly, the article ends with this:

In ominous remarks made public two weeks ago, CSIS director Richard Fadden revealed that Toronto has become a haven for those trying to acquire technology to build weapons of mass destruction. “There are a lot of people who are very, very active in this area,” Fadden said in a speech to the Canadian Military Institute.

Exporters should keep this in mind when dealing with new or unknown customers from Toronto.

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Copyright © 2010 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
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