These were supplied via ASM/Burt Co./RTP/John Huxley. I guess no one wanted to take responsibility for delivery. When I bought the Huxley reference collection from Jeffrey Lindsay he told me stories of how this and several other 'genuine' middle east orders were refused by customs and returned repeatedly and had to be taken personally, usually via somewhere it was safe to take them in like Bahrain.
He said there were often problems getting payments also, with refusals from the UK and US banks to take wire transfers from some middle east banks.

ABP Myers were the European distributor for Bud Jones. They had several middle east orders confiscated which almost led to their bankruptcy and as a result Huxley bought ABP for pennies on the dollar.
They even put a bid in to buy Bud Jones but dealings were protracted and after Jeffrey retired and Bud died, TCS Huxley abandoned clay and metal inlay chips and went the way of distributing RTP, Dolphin and Matsui produced chips instead.