Advertisement
US, Israel war on Iran
OpinionWorld Opinion
Zohaib Altaf
Opinion
Zohaib Altaf

Flexible dual-use claims could be new global trade chokepoint

In an increasingly fractured world, elastic dual-use claims could become not just a security tool but a new sticking point in global trade

3-MIN READ3-MIN
1
Listen
US forces patrol near the Iranian-flagged cargo ship Touska after they boarded and seized the vessel in the Arabian Sea on April 19. Photo: Reuters
Zohaib Altaf
Zohaib Altaf is a research officer at the Center for International Strategic Studies, Azad Jammu & Kashmir.
On Sunday, the US Navy seized the Iranian-flagged cargo vessel Touska. It happened in the middle of a US pressure campaign on Tehran after Washington had expanded blockade enforcement and warned that vessels suspected of carrying goods that provide support to Iran could be stopped. The ship, travelling from China via Malaysia, was suspected of carrying components deemed dual-use.

In the immediate context, the label served a wartime purpose, but the significance of the episode goes beyond one ship or one crisis. The seizure of the Touska did not create the dual-use problem. Instead, it exposed how easily wartime pressure can push what appears to be ordinary commercial cargo into a category that is becoming harder to precisely define.

Modern conflict helps explain why the dual-use category has widened so much. A Royal United Services Institute report found more than 450 foreign-made components in Russian weapons recovered in Ukraine, while separate reporting identified more than 15,000 shipments of Western electronic components that reached Russia after the invasion. Many of these were commercially available parts and not obviously military items, showing how ordinary goods circulating through civilian supply chains can still end up serving wartime functions.

On the trade side, the European Commission reported that authorised European Union dual-use exports rose from €38.5 billion (US$45.2 billion) in 2021 to €57.3 billion in 2022, while export denials increased from 568 to 831. These figures do not show that all trade is dual-use. They do show that a growing share of commercially ordinary industrial and technology-intensive cargo now carries potential strategic relevance.

Select Voice
Select Speed
1x
AI-generated voice