WASHINGTON: An Israeli IT company has admitted to selling an online business management system to the Tehran Chamber of Commerce.
Yehoshua Meiri, a spokesperson for the Israeli company DaroNet, told The Media Line that his company had sold Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce over 70 licenses providing for the use of DaroNet’s signature business website management software.
The $1 million deal, signed last month at the Israeli company’s European headquarters in Belgium, involved a down payment of $200,000, to be followed by ten further payments throughout the year.
“The deal is signed and delivered,” Meiri told The Media Line. “They can’t go back on it now.”
Both direct and indirect trade between Israel and Iran is illegal in both countries.
Meiri said his company only realized they were selling the system to an Iranian entity when they were asked to translate the system into Farsi. The contract was signed with a European businessman from the Netherlands representing the Tehran Chamber of Commerce.
“Once we realized, we decided to lower our profile a bit on this issue,” he said. “I have no idea if they know we are Israeli, but anyway the deal is done and they know now.”
“Lots of Israelis do business with Iran,” he added. “From cherry tomatoes to high tech, it’s a $250 million trade.”
Officials at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce denied knowledge of the deal.
“As far as I know, we have not bought anything from this company and our team has developed our own content management system,” Hassan Ramazani, director of the Chamber of Commerce’s IT department told The Media Line. “But I must look into this matter and get back to you.”
There are severe consequences for Iranians who make contact with Israeli institutions, even if such contact is made accidentally.
Recently an Iranian official at a national sports federation was demoted after a New Year’s congratulatory message was sent to sports federations around the world, including Israel. The construction of Tehran’s new Khomeini International Airport was delayed when some Israeli products were found to have been used, reports last year that Israeli oranges had found their way into Iranian markets caused a stir in the Iranian press and an Iranian soft drink firm was recently called upon by the government to explain its ties to the Coca Cola Company, seen by Iran to be a major corporate supporter of the Jewish state.
“It’s very rare for these kinds of issues to come up and if this deal actually took place I’m sure they made it by accident,” Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a lecturer at the University of Tehran, said.
“Doing trade with Israel would go down very poorly in Iran and if the trader was in a public position they would lose their job,” he added. “So I don’t think anyone would knowingly do such a thing.”
Israel also strictly forbids trade with Iran, seen by the Jewish state’s leadership as representing the most significant existential threat to the state.
The issue became particularly sensitive for Israel after Nahum Manbar, a prominent Israeli businessman, was caught selling Iran components for chemical weapons in the early 1990s. He was convicted of collaborating with an enemy of the state and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Israel commercial sales to Iran are thought to be rare.
“It is forbidden by Israeli law to export to Iran,” Doron Peskin, an expert on Israel’s regional economic ties and the head of research at Info-Prod Research (Middle East) Ltd told The Media Line. “The risks are too high for an Israeli company to deal with Iran, even indirectly.”
“I believe Israeli businesses have some (moral) responsibility if they realize they are selling a product to Iran, but at the end of the day we are talking about money,” he said. “Still, some Israeli products find their way to Iran through third parties but if the Iranians find out about any deal, I would say that deal has very little chance of succeeding.”
Dr Ze’ev Maghen, an Iran expert and chairman of the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Bar Ilan University in Israel, argued that while trade between the two countries is rare, economic contact was inevitable.
“You’re only an ideologue to the extent that you can be,” he told The Media Line. “In the world today it’s very hard to know or even define what consists of an Israeli company versus what’s more transnational.” “The Iranians do make certain exceptions as long as it’s not very blatant,” he said. “You have to find someone in the regime willing to make a stink about it, and in today’s atmosphere everyone in the regime is looking to up someone else.”
DaroNet develops multilingual content management systems (CMS) for websites, designed to reduce web site building and content management time. The firm’s main product ‘Expert’ is the most dominant CMS product in the Israeli market, sold to the country’s leading food manufacturer, largest business school, largest trade web portal and online diamond retailer, to name a few. DaroNet has also made sales to the chambers of commerce of Jordan and Oman.
