The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) has taken the old Iran sanctions regulations, torn them up, thrown them away and issued a new set of regulations, now remonikered, for good measure, as the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (“ITSR,” pronounced Its-er, as in “It’s Er Huge Mess.”) These regulations purport to reflect Executive Order 13599, issued February 5, 2012, which sanctioned all the remaining banks and financial institutions that had not been previously sanctioned under prior orders.

Of course the 800-pound gorilla in the room, namely the recently issued Executive Order 13628, which expanded the Iran sanctions to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, goes completely unmentioned. If you read the “new” regulations alone, you would get the incorrect impression that overseas subsidiaries of U.S. companies could still do business, under limited circumstances, with Iran. Why they didn’t hold up these regulations until they could make them, you know, current is a great mystery fathomed probably only by a select few in the subterranean bowels of the Treasury Department.

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Source: Clif Burns | Export Law Blog