Top Iranian government websites discovered on Texas Internet hosting company

company removes site after inquiry

By Todd Bensman

June, 13, 2005

    For the past 14 months, the embargoed hard-line Islamic government of Iran has connected dozens of its official websites to the World Wide Web through an American Internet company headquartered in Bedford, Texas. Among them: the official English-language website of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ul-Uzma Khamenei and official sites of other ruling religious clerics who form one prong of what President George W. Bush has called an "Axis of

Evil."

    The websites of Iran's ruling religious hierarchy have resided unnoticed on

the Internet servers of the Bedford-based company CI-Host since last year, company officials acknowledge. More than 45 other Iranian government websites hosted by CI Host include some that publish Islamic Republic propaganda, hail deceased founding intellectuals of the 1979 revolution, and

provide theological guidance to inquiring souls.

    CI Host said Monday it had taken down all 48 of the sites after a CBS-11 News inquiry brought them to company attention and prompted an internal

investigation. The investigation traced the sites to Iran.

    "At CI Host we definitely believe red, white and blue," said company founder Christopher Faulkner.

    He said CI Host, which carries 225,000 sites whose owners pay for space on its servers, was an unwitting victim of a client in Los Angeles. That client

had brokered American Internet space for the Iranian government unbeknownst to CI Host, Faulkner said. He declined to name the Los Angeles client on the advice of his company's attorney.

    "I think that finding out that indirectly a customer of ours has been doing

business with the Iranian government I do think adds a bit of insult to our country," Faulkner said.

    Comprehensive trade sanctions since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979

Islamic Revolution prohibit almost anyone in the U.S. from doing business with anyone in Iran. Since the early 1980s, the U.S. government has labeled Iran a top state sponsor of global terrorism. Tension between Iran and the

U.S. has spiked since the 9-11 attacks and remains high over Iran's ongoing

effort to develop nuclear weapons. In 2003, the U.S. Treasury Department included in the sanctions most Internet-related business between the two countries, according to a department "guidance" paper.

    Some of the web sites raise unexplored questions about indications of

possible Iranian government activities on American soil.

    For instance, one of the Iranian government web sites promotes a U.S. prison proselytizing mission called the Islamic Humanitarian Service, which claims to field ongoing prison outreach programs in state jails, including in

Louisiana and Michigan. The IHS web site claims the Iran-backed organization "has successfully provided several prisons with supplies of our

Korans.pamphlets and countless essays and discourses on Islamic morality and ethics."

    Another Iranian government web site on CI Host sells a broad range of

religious products marketed under the name "NoorSoft."

    The Iranian web sites were discovered by Aaron Weisburd, an Illinois-based, self-described terrorist web site tracker. His organization, the Society for Internet Research, finds and exposes sites that he says promote terror attacks. His efforts to publicize the sites have forced American and foreign

hosting companies to drop hundreds of web sites run by U.S.-outlawed groups such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.

    Last week, Weisburd published a report revealing the presence of the 48

Iranian government websites on CI Host servers. CBS-11 News has confirmed Weisburd's findings that all belong to an Iranian government entity known as the Computer Research Center of Islamic Sciences (CRCIS) in Qom, Iran.

    The CRCIS amounts to the Iranian government's Internet technology division. A July 1999 National Geographic Magazine article about Iran describes the government's high-tech computer center in Qom as an "incongruous operation" amid the city's many seminary buildings and gold-domed mosques. The author wrote that inside "turbaned scholars and students sat behind banks of computers, dissecting holy texts using Windows 95 or training to become oftware engineers."

    "The center's staff members, all mullahs, produce illustrated CD-ROMs of the Koran and other religious products, which are sold worldwide," the article

states, quoting the center's deputy director as saying "Islam encourages us

to use technology and knowledge."

    Weisburd's discovery of Iranian government websites on an American Internet server provider raises questions about whether such trade violates U.S. sanctions against Iran. Expansive trade sanctions against Iran were updated in 1995, and again to include the Internet in 2003.

    Illegal trade with Iran "by any U.S. person" falls under the civil and criminal enforcement authority of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Trade with Iran that is found to be criminal could bring up to ten years in prison, a $500,000 fine for corporations and a $250,000 fine for individuals. OFAC can impose civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation.

    Faulkner said CI Host has cooperated in the past with the FBI and U.S.

Secret Service to investigate websites belonging to banned terrorist organizations with whom it also is illegal to do business.

    "Being able to set up as a customer and being hosted at CI Host without us

having knowledge of that I think does make us wonder, 'if that is out there, what else is out there?" Faulkner said. "And, how do we take 220,000 sites

and police them for content, including translating them from Arabic into

English and having that rigorous process?"

    Weisburd said he would like federal authorities to determine the identity of

CI Host's Los Angeles client, the one who brokered the web sites.

    "This is what we pay tax money to the federal government for," Weisburd

said. "Hit them (CI Host) over the head with a subpoena. That ought to do

the job."

    Weisburd said hundreds of thousands of Iranian expatriates live in Los

Angeles, so "it is not surprising that some are more than happy to do

business with the regime."

    An OFAC spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. said the department could not comment specifically about the legality of Americans doing business directly from Iran's ruling mullahs.

    "Unless we looked directly at each case individually it would be tough for

us to make a judgment call on legality or illegality," an OFAC spokeswoman

said.

    But CBS-11 News has learned that the treasury department was concerned

enough about Iranian web sites on U.S. servers to mount a "civil inquiry"

against another Dallas-area Internet-service provider, The Planet. According

to a January 12, 2005 "Requirement to Furnish Information" letter to The

Planet, OFAC investigators demanded information pertaining to an Iranian web site hosted by the company.

    "OFAC Enforcement is conducting a civil inquiry to determine whether any

service provided by The Planet.entails a prohibited exportation of goods, technology or services under the Regulations," the letter states. "The information you provide in response to this letter may serve as the basis of

further civil enforcement action by OFAC."

    OFAC officials declined to answer questions about the inquiry. The Planet

has denied knowingly hosting any illegal web sites.