Friday, February 03, 2017

Garbage of mass destruction

One of the nuggets in the new US Treasury sanctions announced today based on investigation of links to various Iranian weapons programs and related activities --

Reem Pharmaceutical, Mirage for Engineering and Trading, and Mirage for Waste Management and Environmental Services are being designated today for being owned or controlled by Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat.  Since 2011, Farhat has been the Chairman of the Board of Reem, a Lebanese pharmaceutical company that also does business in Iraq and Kuwait.  In addition, he is the general manager of Mirage for Engineering and Trading, a Lebanon-based construction company that also manages projects in Iraq worth millions of dollars.  Since 1999, Farhat has also been the general manager of Mirage for Waste Management and Environmental Services, a Lebanese environmental services company specializing in the cleaning, collection, recovery, disposal, and treatment of waste.

Lebanese people would probably enjoy the irony of a waste management company being called Mirage given the ongoing garbage crisis. But the fact this network of companies had contracts in waste management and Iraqi construction shows the dysfunctional economic connections throughout the Middle East -- enabled by the US war in Iraq.

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