Lucent-Alcatel: Doing business with states sponsoring terrorism

The recent announcement of the merger of Lucent and Alcatel, two telecommunications titans, has been heralded in financial circles as a positive development.

However, there is a little-known aspect of Alcatel's business that should make Americans uncomfortable with this new arrangement.

Alcatel does a considerable amount of business with countries on our State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, including Iran and Sudan. Worst of all, the services and products that Alcatel provides to Iran can, at least indirectly, help that nation's military capability. Among its activities in Iran that have relevance to Tehran's military and terrorism-related activities are contracts signed with state-controlled Iranian companies to provide data transmission and switching network capabilities. The contracts have reportedly included provisions of hardware, software, technologies and training to Iranian companies. It likewise is installing an undersea telecommunications cable for Iran.

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