Confronting Swiss greed
Benjamin Weinthal looks at Swiss defiance of sanctions against Iran, featuring the despicable ditz Micheline Calmy-Rey.The Swiss daily NZZ reported on Sunday that Swiss government officials in the Economics Department believe Calmy-Rey is too “careful when dealing with the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” They have also criticized her for snubbing American security interests. Calmy-Rey grounds her opposition to EU sanctions on Switzerland’s “neutrality and impartiality,” which she hopes will “open doors for us in Tehran and Washington” and help Switzerland economically. While Switzerland is not technically a member of the EU, Calmy-Rey is practicing a phony, obsolete notion of neutrality.Weinthal suggests two ways in which the United States could express its displeasure with Swiss behavior.
Her opposition to American security interests and her indifference to the rights of women in Iran are longstanding. In 2008, Calmy-Rey traveled to Tehran to help seal a massive €18 billion gas deal between the Swiss energy giant Elektrizitaets-Gesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) and the state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Co. While euphorically embracing Ahmadinejad during the visit, Calmy-Rey donned a head-scarf.
What can the United States do to rope in the renegade Swiss foreign minister? First, the Obama administration should cite EGL as the first violator of enhanced U.S-based Iran-sanctions legislation. Second, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should replace Switzerland as the diplomatic representative of American interests in the Islamic Republic with the Polish Embassy. The Poles are fighting in Afghanistan and helped liberate Iraq. It is time to reward allies such as Poland who fill the words freedom and democracy with meaning.Switzerland has a long history of using its purported neutrality to choose the side of a conflict that is most helpful to its economic interests. To put it bluntly, the Swiss largely collaborated with the Nazis during World War II because they made a lot of money by doing so. Although I agree with both of Weinthal's proposals, and although the second idea would undoubtedly please the Poles, I doubt it would be of much interest to the Swiss. Moreover, while sanctioning EGL may cost that particular company, it may not have as much impact on the Swiss economy as a whole.
The United States has a much juicier carrot that it can use to try to change Swiss behavior. For the past several years, the Internal Revenue Service has been engaged in a tenacious struggle against Switzerland's most important industry, its banks. The IRS has been trying to get around Swiss bank secrecy laws to get at accounts of persons who are hiding money in Switzerland. The Swiss have been genuinely offended by what they see as American interference in their legal system. If the US can find a way to back off its pursuit of the Swiss banks, in exchange for Swiss compliance with US and EU sanctions, perhaps another pipeline for the Iranian economy can be shut down. After all, the IRS action only involves money. Stopping Iran is a matter of life and death.
More on Micheline Calmy-Rey and Switzerland's relations with Ahmadinejad here and here.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:11 AM
2 Comments:
the Swiss should be taken to court for handling stolen money: from Iran to Zimbabwe, billions of dollars are stolen from these countries and placed in the personal accounts of mass-murderers.
The other side of the Swiss is that they, like Europeans in general, cannot admit to any imperfection. I was once staying at a hotel in Lucerne for a technical conference. The night before checkout, I went to the front desk to check an apparent billing discrepancy and met a man who looked to be the head cashier. I told him what I wanted to clear up and he had a sort of hissy fit, as if I had accused him of some heinous crime.
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