Smuggling Saffron: The Lesser-Known Iranian Sanction

For thousands of years, saffron has cast its ruby-colored spell on the rich and powerful, poor and disenfranchised alike. It has held significant stature in global religions, been known to treat dozens of ailments in multiple world cultures and for millennia maintained a value more often associated with gold and jewels. Cleopatra took saffron-infused baths because she believed it heightened her sexual exploits. After the Pope refused to grant Henry VIII a divorce, in 1527, the king promptly turned Protestant and persecuted Irish who wore saffron-dyed clothi — because he felt the rich red color showed allegiance to the papacy.

To most in the West, it’s the stuff that makes rice yellow. Sometimes people bake it in cookies.

In any and all cases, its timeless street value has made it an irrepressible attraction for criminals looking for a high-value product that doesn’t carry the overt risk of transporting drugs and other illicit goods.

Borne of an electric-purple crocus flower, it is the intricate hand-processed nature of saffron that adds physical value to its mystical allure: Each bulb contains just three threads of saffron, and it requires upward of 175,000 bulbs to yield a single kilo. By volume and at its finest, it is at times more valuable than gold.

Beyond the painstaking labor required to harvest it, saffron also suffers the second misfortune of geography — and the political nature of a geography drawn along nuclear lines. This comes most obviously in the form of Iran, which produces roughly 90 percent of the approximately 300 tons the planet produces annually, and is handcuffed (currently) by global sanctions of its goods owing to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In a highly publicized, extraordinarily politicized deal drawn with other members of the United Nations, President Barack Obama’s administration has cut a deal with Iran: The world at large will relieve Iran of the sanctions that has sent its economy into the gutter, and in return Iran will stop — or at least slow down — its efforts to make a nuclear weapon. The deal is currently being hotly contested in Congress, bringing to the front such powerful lobbies as those who support Israel, Iran’s mortal enemy, and others who just want the country’s oil.

If the agreement goes through, a little-known exemption may also make the importation of agricultural products legal in the next year — products like saffron. It’s a drastic change in thinking among the political class, who have roundly and at length dismissed all trade with Iran.

“The idea behind sanctions are: You’re going to prohibit certain business from going on … based on U.S. national security and foreign-policy objectives,” says Jack Hayes, an attorney with Steptoe & Johnson, which advises companies on doing business with countries coping with economic sanctions, like Iran. He adds: “Is this a national-security-type issue? It’s not guns. It’s not narcotics. It’s not contaminated food, even. It’s just this is what Congress decided and the president needs to implement.”

Until now, the situation with saffron has left chefs with few other places to find the spice, which is integral to national dishes like Spain’s paella or France’s bouillabaisse. Recent census data shows the United States imported 78,000 pounds of saffron from around the world in 2014, all — presumably — from countries other than Iran, while other data compiled by agencies like the World Bank shows that Spain and Kashmir produce a fraction of the remaining saffron. But with Iran producing 90 percent of the global saffron, it seems unlikely, if not impossible, that the entirety of saffron in America steers clear of Iran’s illegal crop.

At least as important are press reports estimating that nearly 90 percent of the world’s saffron is adulterated, which is to say wrongly mixed with other, lesser ingredients, dyed illegally, or otherwise altered or relabeled.

Saffron is often called “the suitcase spice,” an ingredient sold to Manhattan purveyors by visitors from Iran who bring it over in their carry-on luggage and unload it to shop owners who tenderly guard it behind their counters. Spice experts say that its illegal trade has made saffron privy to the whims of the Russian mob and other questionable characters. According to Spanish newspapers, Spanish police arrested five people in Alicante last year for selling to a U.S. supermarket chain more than 100,000 euros in illegal “Spanish saffron” that was actually from Syria and Iran.

“Saffron is the number-one problem spice because there is still so much illegal black trade going on, mostly because Iran is the Saudi Arabia of saffron. They control most of the world’s market,” says Philippe de Vienne, a 30-year spice hunter and owner of the shop Epices de Cru, in Montreal. “That means that the saffron goes through the window instead of the front door, where it’s legal and open and transparent, and it becomes a very semitransparent type of trade.”

Spain has long been a favorite among spice traders looking to traffic Iranian saffron to the rest of the world, but recently the practice has grown more difficult, owing to a crackdown on the illegal relabeling of saffron. In December 2014, the European Union began targeting accuracy in labeling for all types or products, including saffron. The agency responsible for protecting the authenticity of Spanish saffron also has been cracking down on any shops selling saffron that wrongly says it is from the La Mancha region, which recently was granted Protected Designation of Origin status — like wines from the Champagne region of France or cheese from Parmagiano-Reggiano. Angelica Intriago, who with her husband owns the Spanish fine-food market Despana in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, says she recently received a cease-and-desist order for selling saffron advertised as coming from La Mancha that was not in fact from La Mancha. Intriago says the shop simply pulled the product.

“We thought it was good that they were looking out for their name,” says Intriago. In turn Intriago has begun recalibrating the ways in which she deals with saffron, focusing on organic products and dealing directly with producers rather than exporters, and things are getting better.

But people who cook with saffron out of Iran argue that the best stuff is worth seeking out because just a few threads can go a long way. Kat Jazayeri, the 26-year-old co-owner of Bread & Salt Hospitality, which designs pop-up restaurants in the Boston area, associates the flavors and fragrance of saffron with her childhood. Her mother, who is from Texas, and her father, who is from Tehran, wed in Iran four days before the Iran hostage crisis. She says her family never cooked with saffron bought in local shops — that saffron was a cultural event within her family.

“When my aunts would visit or anyone would come back from Iran, there would be an unveiling of the suitcase,” says Jazayeri. “Instead of toys or presents in the traditional sense, our gifts from Iran were always food, and the big prize was always the tin, or the jar, or the vial of saffron.”

Today saffron merchants who deal with Iran are positioning themselves to sell the spice as soon as it becomes legal. At the Fancy Food Show in New York City in June 2015, executives from saffron distributors like Berlin-based Miasa met with U.S. Customs officials to discuss exporting saffron from Iran to the United States. While a Customs spokesperson declined to comment for this article, Miasa’s executives said they felt they received a warm response.

“They were absolutely encouraging,” said Michael Sabet, chief executive of Miasa, who met with a Customs official on June 29 and June 30 as negotiators from Iran and the United States were working to hammer out a nuclear weapons deal. Sabet says he clearly told U.S. Customs he preferred importing Iranian saffron instead of Spanish saffron to the United States. “That’s what we would like to fight for, because that’s the quality.”

Saffron has been a contested spice throughout recorded history, says Pat Willard, author of Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World’s Most Seductive Spice. She notes that Cleopatra bathed in it to bronze her body and Alexander the Great washed his hair in it to make him look more god-like. But Willard also punctuates the prevalent criminalization that’s accompanied saffron through the ages, describing how, on one noteworthy occasion, a widow who mixed her saffron with marigolds before taking it to market was arrested and executed for the crime — buried alive, her mouth stuffed with saffron.

But the more contemporary issues with importing saffron from Iran began in 1987, says Tyler Cullis, a legal fellow at the National Iranian American Council. Back then, President Ronald Reagan imposed an import ban on all Iranian goods into the country following the Tanker War, in which Iran interrupted U.S. shipping in the Gulf region, and also because the United States believed Iran helped support a series of Hezbollah terrorist attacks against the United States government.

That changed on March 17, 2000, when then–Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced in a speech before the American Iranian Council that the government would create an exception for agricultural products from Iran, like carpets, dried fruits and nuts.

When the exceptions took effect, during the George W. Bush administration, the saffron business immediately started to boom. Census Bureau data shows that the amount of saffron imported to the United States more than doubled to 1,000 kilograms between 2002 and 2010. Behroush Sharifi — an Iranian-born, British-educated Grateful Dead follower with an interest in poetry — quickly launched an importing business and benefited mightily from bringing in highly sought-after saffron from Iran beginning in 2001. At the company’s height, he was selling saffron to 2,000 different restaurants and shops across the nation. His saffron was selling for $238 an ounce, or $8,330 a kilogram.

“Saffron allowed me to play the role of a cultural ambassador,” says Sharifi. “Cooking, in very basic terms, brings people together. When we come together over a meal, it’s a very simple way for me to show Iran in a positive light.”

That abruptly changed in 2010, when the U.S. Congress announced it was going to codify a trade ban with Iran with the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010. Overnight it became illegal to bring in Iranian saffron, and U.S. Census data shows that the amount of saffron imported from Iran shrunk to zero by 2011.

“Congress had looked back at the Clinton administration’s efforts to extend its hand to the Iranians and realized it hadn’t accomplished any significant U.S. goals,” says Cullis. “As a result, it decided to revoke that authorization.”

Sharifi discovered the news in a bland announcement in the federal register, saying that the law shut down his business immediately, just as it was taking root. He had to stop selling saffron entirely and move over to selling truffles. And with the stoppage went any forward momentum saffron may have had in the States.

“Our business came to an end overnight,” says Sharifi. “We had to reinvent ourselves.”

On the other hand, Iranian exporters of saffron have not suffered as much from the sanctions on products like saffron — although the American market would be a nice boon to business. Mehrdad Rowhani, CEO of the exporter Saffron Rowhani in Khorosan, wrote in an email that while he is open to selling saffron to the United States, he has carved out a strong business selling to the United Arab Emirates and India. He notes that the success of saffron in America would largely be cultural, making saffron mean something more than yellow rice in the eyes of Americans.

“America needs a lot of Iranian saffron, and we want marketing in America,” wrote Rowhani. “But America is not and never will be the biggest target for the sale of saffron.”

Perhaps it is all moot in a political environment that is saddled not only with a forthcoming American presidential election, but also with the persistent battle between Iran’s West-leaning youth and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, whose ear often belongs to older hardline factions wary of America.

Economic-sanctions experts predict that none of the changes on the table for saffron will take effect until next year — if, once everything is negotiated, they take effect at all.

Originally published at www.foodrepublic.com on July 28, 2015.