But the new OFAC-AIPAC US civilian-targeting sanctions rules are now even more Kafkaesque. For example, if medical- or foodstuffs-producing exporting firms want to do business with Iranian or Syrian importing firms, how can they know if owner # 1 is an SDN and whether he may own 60 percent of Company B and 45 percent of Company C? Further suppose that Company B owns 40 percent of Company D, and Company C owns 60 percent of Company D. Who and what is blocked under the new OFAC rules? It might appear that Company B and its assets are blocked, but Company C and its assets are not. What about Company D? Suppose Ms. A owns 24 percent of Company D through her 60 percent ownership in Company B. She also owns 27 percent of Company D through her 45 percent interest in Company C, which totals 51 percent of Company D. So even though Ms. A cannot control Company D, since she doesn’t control Company C, the majority owner, Company D would be blocked as would all of its assets.
How can the US Treasury departments OFAC agency be so seemingly totally unaware of the business realities of the parties it regulates who want to send medical equipment and foodstuff to the suffering people of Syria and Iran? Many are in dire need, but are being targeted by US-led sanctions for political purposes. Does the Obama administration even care?
Surely the screening problems that these new rules pose are manifest in a situation like this, as is the unfairness of this rule to the other (and majority) owners of Company C if Ms. A is designated after her investment in Company C. The question then is how on Earth can this happen? Can the agency be that deaf to the business realities of the parties it regulates? Does it even care or understand its own regulations?
What about the slowly growing Congressional and public concern over the civilian targeting US sanctions and federal sunshine laws allowing for public input when drafting new US Treasury Department regulations?
Well, AIPAC and OFAC have foreseen that potentially annoying problem. Near the end of the Federal Register, without any public participation, the following has been decreed (emphasis added): “Public Participation. Because these amendments to 31 CFR parts 594, 595, and 597 involve a foreign affairs function, Executive Order 12866 and the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553) requiring notice of proposed rulemaking, opportunity for public participation, and delay in effective date are inapplicable.”
The Obama administration has no interest in public participation or input as it targets the civilian populations of Syria and Iran. And Congress once again is shirking its responsibility.
Why is there not a Congressional or UN delegation visiting Syria for example? Not a silly John McCain photo-op, but a serious delegation arriving to Damascus and Tehran and visiting hospitals and specialized clines, doctors, health ministry officials, patients, and the families of those who need very specialized drugs, for example, with certain diseases such as cancer and, in Syria, with refugees suffering from malnutrition due to the US-led sanctions.
The US-led sanctions increasingly target the Iranian and Syrian people for purely political purposes in order to ignite civil unrest that the Obama Administration hopes will lead to regime chance. They are immoral, illegal, ineffective at achieving regime change, and they are doing incalculable damage to millions of innocents while further squandering whatever respect for our country still exists abroad and increasingly even within our own boarders as evidenced by the recent spate of protests on a number of subjects sending the message to Washington that it is time to come home and rebuild our society.
