Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 157 posts

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#121

Post by EpicEng »

vkou wrote: post #94
EpicEng wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your suggestion? Country X won't play nice, what do you do? given your moral stance on sanctions I can't imagine you would propose war. So what are the options? What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors? The world isn't some idyllic place where there's always a solution to every problem which harms no one. Yes, the citizenry often gets caught…

> What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors? Why would a country sitting on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world consider nuclear proliferation a bad thing? After all, I am frequently told that MAD prevents wars, no?

Mostly because we haven't been running around talking about wiping other nations off of the map. Obviously we have our own issues, but you can't honestly be proposing a moral equivalence between the US and Iran.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#122

Post by omeid2 »

syntaxing wrote: post #74

Warranted or not, sanctions can be seen as one step before war. It's an effective method to hit them where it hurts (their pockets) without creating casualties directly. The whole point of sanctions is to drive the enemies GDP down on purpose to "flex your arms". It does not matter whether the sanctioned goods are dangerous or not. Once again, the ultimate goal is to smother their GDP growth. And like all foreign pol…

Accepting laws and punishment without consideration of it's fairness (being warranted) is very cowardly.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#123

Post by dunpeal »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #116
dunpeal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliable source for that claim? I'll be very surprised if the sanctions blocked hospitals from purchasing medical supplies. If anything, I'd suspect the problem was poverty.

Here’s a few google results, but I haven’t checked them for accuracy: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill... https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/were-sanctions-r... This one looks promising: https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/report/57jqa...

I skimmed some of these links. The main argument appears to be that the sanctions created economic hardship, and that in turns caused suffering and death.

That's a natural result of any sanctions. You may decide to oppose any sanctions to avoid this result, but when the alternative is violent military, there's a good argument to why this is the lesser evil.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#124

Post by CryptoPunk »

rgbrenner wrote: post #105
tempguy095432 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were not UN sanctions. If you read the report it clearly says these were regulations placed by Washington. UN had no banking restrictions on Iran if the activity was unrelated to nuclear proliferation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran

Computer equipment can be used to run simulations for nuclear weapons (in fact, this is how nuclear weapons have been tested for decades.. and why we don't detonate them any more), and therefore is prohibited under the UN sanctions. Additionally, the UN sanctions also prohibit banking services for prohibited items. This is what Meng is accused of: attempting to transfer HP computers to Iran, and using the US financia…

Do you have any sources? The only relevant information I was able to find is Canada's list of nuclear-related dual-use items:

https://www.international.gc.ca/controls-controles/about-a_p...

Which was used for its enforcement of the UN sanctions.

The list only includes very specialized computer hardware that can operate at very low temperatures or high radiation environments.

None of the news reports I've seen state that Huawei is being accused of violating UN sanctions. The US justice department sought Meng's extradition on the grounds that she committed fraud by lying to banks.

The violation of the sanctions would have been part of the extradition request if they were UN sanctions, as that would meet the dual-criminality bar, so given they're not, it's very likely these were US-specific sanctions, and the extradition request was made on the grounds of the fraud charge because, unlike the sanctions violations, it could potentially meet the requirement of dual-criminality.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#125

Post by CryptoPunk »

syntaxing wrote: post #74

Warranted or not, sanctions can be seen as one step before war. It's an effective method to hit them where it hurts (their pockets) without creating casualties directly. The whole point of sanctions is to drive the enemies GDP down on purpose to "flex your arms". It does not matter whether the sanctioned goods are dangerous or not. Once again, the ultimate goal is to smother their GDP growth. And like all foreign pol…

Another way to see is that sanctions are a way to wage war without the problematic optics of direct military intervention, and thus they lower the threshold for inflicting harm on another nation.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#126

Post by CryptoPunk »

dunpeal wrote: post #123
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a few google results, but I haven’t checked them for accuracy: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill... https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/were-sanctions-r... This one looks promising: https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/report/57jqa...

I skimmed some of these links. The main argument appears to be that the sanctions created economic hardship, and that in turns caused suffering and death. That's a natural result of any sanctions. You may decide to oppose any sanctions to avoid this result, but when the alternative is violent military, there's a good argument to why this is the lesser evil.

>>That's a natural result of any sanctions.

Which contradicts the OP's claim that sanctions don't create casualties.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#127

Post by jessaustin »

dunpeal wrote: post #123
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a few google results, but I haven’t checked them for accuracy: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill... https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/were-sanctions-r... This one looks promising: https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/report/57jqa...

I skimmed some of these links. The main argument appears to be that the sanctions created economic hardship, and that in turns caused suffering and death. That's a natural result of any sanctions. You may decide to oppose any sanctions to avoid this result, but when the alternative is violent military, there's a good argument to why this is the lesser evil.

You seem a bit disingenuous here. Upthread you needed "a source" for the obvious fact that hospitals are part of a national economy. Now the deaths of children are "a natural result". Which is it, really? Maybe it's just good for USA policy to kill kids, by one way or another? Anyway, sanctions are usually just a pretext for war. (Every military disaster USA has perpetrated during my parents' lifetimes has been preceded by sanctions.) The military-industrial-media complex tells us over and over that sanctions are some sort of peaceful option, but a cursory examination of history proves that is a damnable lie.

"The alternative" is what every president from Washington through Arthur would have advocated: stay on our own continent and mind our own business.

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#128

Post by jessaustin »

austinheap wrote: post #9
simplecomplex wrote: post #4

Can someone explain how the world is a better place by outlawing business with Iran? Remember, the crime here is selling telecom equipment...

The goal of most sanctions, from a diplomatic perspective, is to place enormous financial pressure on an economy so that the population revolts agains the government in question. It's believed that when the "price of onions" becomes too high for a society to tolerate, revolution occurs. I'm not saying the world is/isn't a better place, just explaining the common beltway logic re: Iran sanctions.

(This scenario of popular revolt has never actually transpired.)

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#129

Post by boomboomsubban »

EpicEng wrote: post #90
boomboomsubban wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US has laws and I expect our justice department to arrest those who break our laws regardless of their nationality if they step into our country (or allies). Do you expect every citizen of a town to be punished because the store ownet broke the law then? As that's the equivalent of sanctions. >The WTO submitted a report last year about the efficacy of sanctions (and it happens to be on Iran) for those curious Th…

So what's your suggestion? Country X won't play nice, what do you do? given your moral stance on sanctions I can't imagine you would propose war. So what are the options? What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors? The world isn't some idyllic place where there's always a solution to every problem which harms no one. Yes, the citizenry often gets caught…

You act like the US is just an innocent judge forced to punish those naughty countries. We have now spent forty years economically attacking Iran, paid people tons of money to kill Iranians, invaded and destroyed a neighboring country, and spent the entire time threatening Iran with nuclear/non-nuclear destruction. Yet they are considered the "bad actor."

Re: New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria

#130

Post by boomboomsubban »

EpicEng wrote: post #121
vkou wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors? Why would a country sitting on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world consider nuclear proliferation a bad thing? After all, I am frequently told that MAD prevents wars, no?

Mostly because we haven't been running around talking about wiping other nations off of the map. Obviously we have our own issues, but you can't honestly be proposing a moral equivalence between the US and Iran.

The US has actively caused many nations to be wiped off the map, including attempting to remove Yemen right now.
Post reply on HN