Yesterday, and only hours after the ISIS attack on Tehran, the Senate voted to invoke cloture by a vote of 91-8 to allow a vote on S.722, the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017. News reports suggest that further action on the bill, which is otherwise likely to pass the Senate, is being delayed for the moment based on a desire to tack onto the bill new Russia sanctions.

The pending legislation follows the pattern of recent Iran sanctions legislation. Rather than affirmatively imposing specific sanctions, the legislation would require the President to impose a variety of sanctions, including asset blocking, against companies and individuals, including foreign companies and individuals, who the President determines has assisted Iran in certain activities. Those activities are aiding Iran’s ballistic missile program, assisting Iran’s violations of human rights, and materially contributing to the transfer of arms to Iran.  Additionally, the President is directed to impose blocking and transactional sanctions on the “officials, agents, or affiliates” of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran has argued, not surprisingly, that the Senate Bill is inconsistent with the JCPOA, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. The strongest argument in this regard concerns the secondary sanctions imposed on non-U.S. companies involved in arms sales to Iran. Under section 1.8 of Annex II to the JPCPOA, the E.U. commits to lift its arms embargo on Iran. And under section 5.1.2 of Annex II, the United States commits to “license non-U.S. entities that are owned or controlled by a U.S. person to engage in activities with Iran that are consistent with this JCPOA.”
The proposed legislation would require the President to impose sanctions on foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies that engage in arms deals with Iran, which would appear to violate that commitment. Although nothing in the U.S. commitments forecloses it from imposing secondary sanctions on wholly-foreign companies that engage in arms trading with Iran, it would difficult to argue that the JPCPOA prevented secondary sanctions on foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies but not on wholly-foreign companies.

Of course, any violation here would be purely prospective. Under section 20.1 of Annex V, the arms embargo is not lifted until eight years after Implementation Day. Moreover, no violation would occur until the President actually designated a company under the proposed legislation, which may or may not ever happen. So although the proposed legislation might ultimately lead to a potential violation of the JCPOA, the simple adoption of the bill itself would not.

Last week I posted on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’s opinion setting aside the $4 million fine that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) imposed on Epsilon Electronics for shipping weapons of mass destruction (namely, subwoofers and other car audio pimping items)  to Iran.  As noted in the prior post, the D.C. Circuit came to the somewhat astonishing conclusion that you could violate the prohibition on exporting to Iran if there were red flags that your shipment might be diverted from the country of export to Iran even if that shipment ultimately did not wind up in Iran. Even so, the Court set aside the jaw-dropping fine and sent the case back to OFAC for further consideration.

Having found that OFAC did not need evidence of a shipment to Iran to fine someone for exporting to Iran, the Court then took the paradoxical position that OFAC erred by not considering evidence that five of the thirty-nine shipments involved might not have actually gone to Iran. The emails in question were ones that “contemplate[d] [Epsilon] products being sold out of the Asra store in Dubai.” The Court explains this apparent inconsistency by saying that these emails tended to show that Epsilon “did not have reason to know those shipments were specifically intended for reexport to Iran.” Remember, the Court has taken the position that, in the Court’s version of “ordinary English usage,”  you are “exporting” something to someone if you have reason to know it might go to that party even if it never does.

Leaving aside this metaphysical and linguistic conundrum about un-exported exports, the Court’s discussion of OFAC’s treatment of the ignored evidence is instructive.

Government counsel explained at oral argument that OFAC did not consider the emails credible evidence. We can infer as much from the agency’s liability finding. But we lack an explanation, from the record, of why they are not credible, and why they do not counsel against liability for the final five shipments.

The only discussion of the credibility of these emails in the record was an internal OFAC memorandum not provided to Epsilon, but the Court dismissed its reasoning. That memo argued that the Asra store opened after all but two of the five shipments in issue had been sent, but the Court noted that this would not rebut an inference that the earlier shipments were meant for sale at the store when it opened. Even more significantly, the Court noted:

We also note the low value of the last five shipments, two of which were worth just over one hundred dollars apiece. At the
time those shipments were sent, Epsilon knew its dealings with Asra were under OFAC investigation. OFAC did not explain why Epsilon would knowingly risk fines of up to $250,000 per shipment in return for such a small reward.

This is, of course, an excellent point and it could go much further than the case at hand. It is, indeed, a legitimate question that can be raised almost any time OFAC or the DOJ go after low-value exports.  Of the many things in the opinion for OFAC to dislike, I bet this part of the opinion is at the top of their list.