Israel Matzav: And you thought it was the French who would do anything for money?

Monday, September 24, 2007

And you thought it was the French who would do anything for money?

Actually, until Sarcozy was elected, it was the French who would do anything for money. But according to Yossi Klein Halevy in today's Wall Street Journal, it's the Germans who will do anything for money - including ignoring the genocidal intent of Ahamdinejad's Iran.

Why, then, the German obstructionism on efforts to contain a nuclear Iran? Business interests, of course, offer one explanation. Last year, German exports to Iran totaled about $5 billion. Though German trade with Iran has reportedly dropped this year by 20%, some 5,000 German companies--including major corporations like BASF, Siemens, Mercedes and Volkswagen--continue to do business in Tehran. As Michael Tockuss, former president of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, boasted last year, "Some two-thirds of Iranian industry relies on German engineering products."

Klein Halevy thinks it goes beyond business interests:

Still, however substantial, business interests alone can't explain Germany's refusal to seriously confront the Iranian threat. The men and women I met in Berlin are obviously concerned about the stability of the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish state, and recognize that a nuclear-armed and expansionist Shiite regime is a danger, ultimately, to Europe as well.

Perhaps another reason for German blindness on Iran is a misplaced sense of contrition. In insisting on engagement rather than confrontation with Tehran, Germans seem to believe they are keeping faith with the lessons of their history. All problems should be peacefully resolved; no aggressor is irredeemable. That was the message offered last week by German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger, who, even as he insisted that Germany was ready "if necessary" to confront Iran, quickly added that Berlin was prepared to give the Ahmadinejad regime "a chance to recover the international community's lost confidence in its nuclear program. If Iran is ready to do this then I think we can spare ourselves future sanctions debates."

The message Germany is inadvertently sending the Ahmadinejad regime is: Continue to hold out because the West is divided and ultimately will abandon not only the military option but the economic one, too.

I give the Germans more credit than that. I believe that they hiding behind the 'no aggressor is irredeemable' line to justify continuing to rake in the cash. I don't think they are actively trying to implement a lesson learned in World War II, but rather that they are trying to use their World War II experience to justify what they want to do anyway.

But Klein Halevy's conclusion is correct:

By weakening the sanctions effort, Germany is sabotaging the only real alternative--as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has described sanctions--to war with Iran. By strengthening the Iranian regime, Germany endangers Israel, to whose well-being it is committed. And perhaps most ironic of all, by appeasing evil rather than resisting it, Germany compromises its profound efforts to break with its past.

On Friday, I made a similar argument:

No matter how powerful the sanctions might be, countries like Russia, China, North Korea and the Arab world will not abide by them. If imposing 'sanctions' meant that Iran could be hermetically sealed, Krauthammer's prescription might make sense. But it can't and won't be. The time for sanctions has long since passed due to the weak-kneed Europeans and pernicious Russians and Chinese refusing for so long to adopt and abide by real sanctions.

Counter-intuitively, the continuing failure of superpowers like Russia and China to permit the adoption of 'powerful sanctions,' and the continuing failure of Europe to abide by them, are going to leave the Bush administration - which is unlikely to leave this problem to its successor - with a Hobson's choice: attack the nuclear installations and risk the consequences of a devastating war in the Middle East, or allow Iran to go nuclear and slaughter millions of people that would likely include much of Israel. I'd bet on the attack.

For some reason, the Germans don't seem to get it.