The other day, swig was bored and decided to put his mind to use. He wanted to figure out some crazy way to make HI, without the need for red phosphorus. He started to think about ionic bonds, and displacement reactions, etc. But nothing came to mind. Then swig, started to think a little about organic chemistry, and a little idea came to mine. Swig remembered that benzene and other phenyl substituents, undergo substitution reactions. Since benzene is hard to get, plus toxic, toluene came to mine. The methyl group on the benzene ring is a weak activator, which means that toluene would react with I2 in a solution of HNO3. This would form either para-iodotoulene, or ortho-iodotoulene. Those products are not important. What is important is that she releases an H+ into the solution, which could be picked up by I-. Now, I do understand that my proposal does have flaws, which I will describe at the bottom, but this is something we should look into.
1. A problem with competing N.philes. ADDkid
P.S. Sorry I forgot the point, but anyway here it is. Phenol, might be a strong act. to allow I2 to react with out HNO3