Israel Matzav

Good news: Israeli company sells computer system to Iran

An Israeli information technology company is selling an online business management system to the Tehran Chamber of Commerce despite restrictions in both countries against doing business with each other.

Yehoshua Meiri, a spokesman for the Ramat Gan-based company DaroNet, said his company had sold Teheran's Chamber of Commerce more than 70 licenses providing for the use of DaroNet's signature business Web site management software.

The $1 million deal, signed last month at DaroNet's European headquarters in Belgium, involved a down payment of $200,000, to be followed by 10 payments throughout the year.

"The deal is signed and delivered," Meiri said. "They can't go back on it now."

And how did they get around the fact that Israeli companies aren't allowed to sell to Iran?

Meiri said his company only realized it was selling the system to an Iranian entity when it was asked to translate the system into Farsi. The contract was signed with a European businessman from the Netherlands representing the Teheran Chamber of Commerce.

I want to make something clear up front: In general, the Israeli government is more than happy to have Israeli companies sell to countries that are our enemies. I once represented a company that was selling to Malaysia and had set up a separate entity to do that. Over the years, I have been involved in business (or attempts to do business) in that country as well as in many countries across the Arab world (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Nigeria and the Emirates all come to mind). But not Iran and not Syria. How can Israel expect other countries not to sell high tech (especially high tech!) equipment to Iran when we ourselves are doing so?

I hope Daronet is prosecuted. It's obvious that they knew darned well to whom they were selling.

Read the whole thing. And for those who don't read Hebrew, the first number at the top is their phone number (substitute +972-3 for 03 outside of Israel) and the second number is their fax number.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:44 PM