IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 68

and clearly being "strong supporters of IEEE." If closing them was
supposed to enhance the reputation of IEEE and the united States
among the young people of Iran,
it is difficult to see how it could
have been anything but entirely
counter-productive.
In the initial letters to Iranian
IEEE members and others, it was
stated that the Iran Student Members were not only forbidden to
have an IEEE Student Branch,
but were also forbidden to use the
IEEE name or logo in any way.
This highlights the paradoxical
nature of the advice given, since
OFAC regulations would also have
forbidden any u.S. lawyer from
operating in Iran, and so any process to prevent such use of name or
logo or to enforce the restrictions
could surely not have been started
without itself breaching the OFAC
regulations.
Somewhat later, there was a
statement from IEEE that the logo
and name could be used by Iranian student member groups (even
though IEEE Student Branches as
such were still forbidden).
Sudan and Libya were also in the
"forbidden/embargoed" category in
r8, but there were no IEEE Operational units (Ous) there and none
planned, and probably very few
members, so this had no impact.
Two other countries were listed,
Burma (Myanmar) and Cuba, but
they were outside r8. Curiously,
several countries that might be
expected to have been on the list
were absent (for example North
Korea) and in some later reports,
Burma was no longer mentioned.
Particularly in IEEE r8,
there were substantial concerns
over the situation and the IEEE
action triggered many adverse
responses from r8 students and
other members.
The IEEE r8 Operations Committee (Opcom) discussed the matter and expressed its concern at the
effects of the policy butwere not
in a position to actively oppose it.
68

There was dismay at what was happening and on the damaging effect
it was having on the reputation of
IEEE in the region.
The impact of the Iran decision
had a substantial impact across
r8. Particularly, members of many
Student Branches in many countries felt outraged that IEEE was
taking this action, seen to be in
clear breach of IEEE's claims to be
a world-wide organization which
did not discriminate on grounds
of race, gender, politics or religion.
There was felt by some to be a realistic risk that many IEEE student
members might resign and that
IEEE Student Branches across r8
might in effect be in danger of collapse. Of course many other members of IEEE had similar feelings
to the students and GOLD members, but moderated by 'realism',
perhaps because they no longer
had the 'idealism' of the younger
members.
The IEEE r8 OpCom passed a
motion regretting the situation and
with the r8 News Editor, prepared
an explanatory statement for possible inclusion in r8 News. The
text that they proposed was submitted to IEEE Piscataway for "clearance," where senior staff indicated
that they were not in favor of two
clauses, as follows:
X: "The serious consequences for Region 8 arising
from the situation described
by the IEEE President are
not only the impact of the
loss of IEEE membership
services and IEEE activities
for those directly concerned,
but also the indirect consequences arising from the discovery by many other IEEE
members that their involvement in IEEE activities can
be constrained by the laws of
a country of which they are
not citizens."
Y: "IEEE is a non-political organization and it is

important to appreciate that
compliance with laws implies
neither approval nor disapproval of those laws."
That these innocuous sounding
statements were, in effect, to be
"censored" demonstrates the extent
to which the senior IEEE management had their thinking dominated
by worries of consequences of failing to comply with every aspect of
the OFAC requirements.
reproduced below are parts
of a letter sent in August 2003 by
Fredun Hojabri, at that time President of Sharif university of Technology Association (SuTA), to
IEEE President Mike Adler and
to several other senior IEEE leaders (the text is taken from Hojabri's
personal website [5]):
"... In direct violation of its
Code of Ethics, Vision, Mission, and Constitution, in the
past 18 months:
[a] IEEE has implemented
unprecedented
restrictive
and discriminatory policies
towards its Iranian members.
Such policies are, apparently, based on arbitrary and
unfounded interpretations of
economic sanctions imposed
by the U.S. government on
Iran. IEEE has adopted the
unfair practice of retaining its Iranian members for
membership statistics purposes and collection of membership dues, while depriving
them from almost all member
rights and benefits. The only
member "privilege" not discontinued to date is receiving
hard copy journals. ... ... ...
To the best of our knowledge
such restrictive and unfair
policies and practices are
not adopted by other scientific societies and institutions operating in the U.S.
[b] With minor exceptions
IEEE has adopted a policy
of silence and ignorance

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