They Sold Them WHAT? For WHAT?

Israeli forces report finding night vision equipment manufactured in the UK in the possession of Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. News accounts indicate that the equipment was sold by the UK to Iran and was intended to “bolster Iranian efforts to combat heroin smuggling across the Afghan border as part of the UN Drug Control Program.”

Israeli forces report finding night vision equipment manufactured in the UK in the possession of Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. News accounts indicate that the equipment was sold by the UK to Iran and was intended to “bolster Iranian efforts to combat heroin smuggling across the Afghan border as part of the UN Drug Control Program.”

OK. We could say a lot of things about British participation in a UN Drug Control Program that relies on Iran. But we won’t, being reminded of the brilliant American decision in the 1980s to take Syrian General Ghazi Kanaan, then-commander of Syrian forces in Lebanon and thus Drug Lord of the Bekaa Valley, on a tour of our own DEA. There is something about drug policy that makes idiots out of otherwise normal people.

It should be no surprise that items with military application sold to Iran wound up with Hezbollah. It was a Chinese C-802 missile sold to Iran that hit Israel’s Sa’ar 5 missile boat, and Israel faced French and Russian anti-tank missiles sold to Syria.

But it is surprising that the British government would have, under any circumstances, allowed the sale. According to The Guardian, “When the night vision equipment was authorised for export, Patrick O’Brien, then a junior minister in the Foreign Office … said there ‘was no risk of these goods being diverted for use by the Iranian military.'” The Guardian added, “The Foreign Office was unable today to say what safeguards had been in place to ensure that.”

Our questions: What other equipment did the British government sell to Iran and where will we find it? Are there night vision goggles in the hands of Iranian-backed Shiites in Iraq, threatening UK forces as well as American forces? Do the British goggles have American components? Does the U.S. have any recourse?

During the first Gulf War there was a major incident in which Iraqi forces used night vision equipment that was purchased from the Dutch company Delft Instruments N.V. The company purchased infrared sensors and thermal imaging scanners from U.S. defense contractors and re-exported them illegally to Iraq. The Iraqis used this equipment successfully during their night attack across the border into the Saudi town of Kafji. U.S. intelligence had been unaware that Iraq possessed night vision equipment for its Soviet-built tanks, until it cost the lives of Allied soldiers. As a result, Delft Instruments N.V. was barred from business in the U.S.

JINSA has long believed that Western countries have an obligation to manage and direct licensing for military equipment sold abroad with an eye toward the risks of meeting one’s own or allied technology in the hands of an enemy. It was a French Exocet Missile that sank the British ship HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War, and crippled the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

The British are our friends and our best allies in the Middle East, but the Bush Administration should consider carefully any impulse to overlook this. The stakes are high for Israel, but the implications for the rest of us are frightening as well.