A lot of commenters are mentioning that Iran is simply using very common parts. I think that's missing the wider context that Iran was only recently eclipsed by Russia as the most sanctioned country on Earth. Going a step deeper, it's not that the parts are common in our globalized world, it's how Iran managed to get them, who supplied them, why Iran is choosing to use sell these limited and expensive parts (relative to global norm), and how that can be mitigated. I tried to find a list of specific parts that would fall under the sanctions, but, ho-boy, that is a deep dive into procurement and sourcing.
A lot of people are assuming that because the US and Europe -- e.g. the collective "West" -- is sanctioning Iran, then the whole world is, and so there is shock and confusion about how Iran can buy very common parts on the global market, when in reality it just calls up Alibaba and gets whatever it wants like everyone else. If China, India, Russia, Brazil, the OPEC nations, Latin America, etc are not sanctioning you, then you are not going to have any trouble obtaining widely available parts. And even things like replacement engines for jet aircraft -- Iran has a domestic airlines and they are able to obtain parts for that, too.
I think the reason why this obvious truism keeps surprising people is that deep down, they are really convinced that the West is the whole world, and so western sanctions are assumed to always be global sanctions, and then people ask questions like "How can Iran have a domestic airline industry if no one is selling them parts? How can Iran possibly make drones? Satellites? Missiles? Gas Turbines?" Etc.
It's a big multipolar world, and very little stuff is actually made in the West. Most stuff is made in Asia and sold globally, and the vast majority of the world and the world's markets are doing business with Iran.
The title of the article is "A single Iranian attack drone found to contain parts from more than a dozen US companies." The concern therein expressed is the perception that US companies are helping Iranians provide weapons to slaughter civilians. I think people understand that Iranians can buy their toys from other countries.
The point is that if the US is a sole producer of a good for which the rest of the world cannot produce a replacement, then it can ban sales of the good to Iran and also threaten to withhold the good from any nation unless they agree to impose custom controls that prevent export of the good to Iran from their own country.
But when the US outsources production to Chinese factories - or when other nations can produce replacement goods on their own - the US can no longer do that, because by definition China can now produce the good as well, and if the US company were to threaten to stop selling the good to, say, Brazil, unless Brazil also promised to not export to Iran, then the Chinese factory would directly sell their version to Brazil instead, and the net result is that the US loses the Brazilian market, but Iran still buys the good. In the new world, there are many suppliers of replacement goods, and so we are not in a position to impose bans on re-export of US made goods to third parties. We can only do that for those goods for which are truly the global sole supplier -- e.g. F-35s and the like. But not for microcontrollers.
In other words, the de-industrialization of the West and spread of manufacturing to asia has, as a consequence, severely limited our ability to unilaterally sanction sales of even the goods we produce to Iran - at least for goods that can be resold. We can no longer credibly threaten to sanction any country that resells our stuff to Iran, and thus force them to comply with our sanctions. As a result, even US made products which can be resold are going to end up in Iran if Iran wants to buy them. And this extends even to things like jet engines, so it's certainly going to apply to memory chips, microcontrollers, RAM, and the inconsequential parts "discovered" to be in the cheap Iranian drones.
In the new multipolar world, if you want Iran to not be able to buy US goods that can be resold, then you have to actually get the whole world to agree to the sanctions, you can no longer impose the sanctions unilaterally. It is only because people do not recognize this new reality that they are surprised that US made components appear in Iranian drones.
And broad sanctions amount to economic blockades which leads to massive civilian suffering. You can't let that farmer repair his tractor because the parts could be used in a drone.
War is hell. Sanctions/blockades are evil and ineffective outside of destroying entire countries.
Diplomacy only works if the counter party is willing to play by the rules. Russia is not such a party. And that has nothing to do with neocons, it has everything to do with the fact that they see diplomacy simply as yet another weapon instead of a way to reach common ground.
The historical details emerging around the Minsk agreements (e.g. Merkel's comments) indicate you are completely wrong here. Not to mention Trump's unilateral pullout of the JCPOA!
I'm going to have to express my ignorance here: are sanctions not 'transitive'? I was under the impression that if a 3rd party violated the sanctions, then they would no longer have parts sent to them.
How would that work? Businesses are liable if they trade with an entity that isn't on the OFAC list but turns out to be a shell company of a restricted entity? Each company needs to not only do KYB and ensure compliance with OFAC lists, but also somehow figure out UBOs for every customer too?
Sounds like a lot of work to me, probably not viable for any but the biggest companies, and even they would struggle.
A lot of commenters are mentioning that Iran is simply using very common parts. I think that's missing the wider context that Iran was only recently eclipsed by Russia as the most sanctioned country on Earth. Going a step deeper, it's not that the parts are common in our globalized world, it's how Iran managed to get them, who supplied them, why Iran is choosing to use sell these limited and expensive parts (relative to global norm), and how that can be mitigated. I tried to find a list of specific parts that would fall under the sanctions, but, ho-boy, that is a deep dive into procurement and sourcing.