UAE's reexport trade with Iran

International Herald Tribune:

Roadside bombings of American troops in Iraq were occurring with bloody regularity when military investigators made a disturbing discovery: American-made computer circuits sold to a trading company in the United Arab Emirates had turned up in the bomb detonators.

That finding set off a clash with Washington last year when the Bush administration cited the diversion of the computer circuits to Iran, and eventually Iraq, as proof that the United Arab Emirates were failing to prevent American technology from slipping into the wrong hands.
...
Yousef al-Otaiba, an adviser to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, said his country was more closely monitoring goods that it re-exported while blocking items that might help Iran build weapons systems. But trade experts, a Commerce Department investigator and Iranian traders in Dubai said evidence was scarce that the new export control law was being broadly enforced.

"It has virtually had no effect, to be honest," said Nasser Hashempour, deputy president of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai. "If someone wants to move something - get it to Iran - it is easy to be done."
...
Executives at several of the so-called red flag companies, those suspected of violating American export controls, said they had faced no increased scrutiny in Dubai.

It's hard for me to understand the level of reexport in Dubai -- and that's what it built its reputation on -- unless you include the factor that much of the money to be made in reexport is meant to defeat some trade barrier erected for economic or political reasons.