And again: Germany helps Iran to finish what it started
The regime that perpetrated the Holocaust two generations ago continues to support the regime that would like to pick up where the first regime left off. In violation of international sanctions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has sold to an Iranian airline a luxury jet that was used by Merkel herself and her predecessors. The airline, Mahan Air, has been under American sanctions since October for ferrying weapons and explosives for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a designated terror organization that is under international sanctions for its participation in Iran's nuclear program. Merkel - a putative 'friend' of Israel - doesn't seem to care. According to Treasury official David Cohen, “Mahan Air’s close coordination with the IRGC-QF [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp-Quds Force], secretly ferrying operatives, weapons and funds on its flights, reveals yet another facet of the IRGC’s extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism.”Yes, tougher sanctions are needed, but they are and will be useless so long as countries like Germany - Iran's largest trading partner - continue to violate and ignore them. That's why sanctions against Iran's Central Bank and similar sanctions are necessary. Until non-American corporations and financial institutions can be told that doing business with Iran means that they will not be allowed to do business with the United States, the existing sanctions will continue to be ignored.
A Western diplomatic source told The Jerusalem Post on Monday: “The case is awkward. It proves again, however, why tougher sanctions need to be imposed on Iran to ensure no bypass and diversion channels are used to break the sanctions.”
The odd sale of a German chancellor’s luxury jet to the Iranians could possibly lead to its use by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or other leading figures of Iran’s government to travel around the world.
In an e-mail to the Post on Monday, Dr. Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, IDC, Herzliya, wrote ... “Germans still largely believe Iran to be someone else’s issue, a distant, if problematic, regime.Someone needs to do a slick movie in German portraying Iran as the heirs to Hitler's heritage and asking Germans if they want to continue in Hitler's path. Maybe that would get their attention and make them see that it's not just Israel's problem.
Read the whole thing.
Der Spiegel describes the jet.
Dubbed Theodor Heuss after the first West German president, the jet is outfitted with posh details that include a sleeping cabin, shower and comfortable leather sofas. And its delivery to Tehran would appear to fly in the face of German diplomacy. Berlin has recently called for tighter sanctions against Iran following the International Atomic Energy Agency's recent report indicating its concern that Tehran is working towards the creation of an atomic weapon.And the Germans are trying to place the blame on a Ukrainian investor group.
Following its decommissioning, the Federal Disposal Sales and Marketing Agency (VEBEG) sold the aircraft to a Ukrainian investor group in late June for €3.1 million. A German military spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE that before its sale, the plane was painted a neutral color, making it a "totally normal airplane" -- albeit one with a rather singular history.Gee - do you think that maybe these Ukrainian investor groups might be acting as fronts for Iran?
The Ukrainian investor then secretly sold the VIP jet to Mahan Air. Industry insiders suggest that the group may have acted as a straw man for the Iranian government from the beginning. According to Christofer Witt, editor of the magazine Skyliner Aviation News and More, a number of Lufthansa planes have been sold to Ukrainian investors in the past, only to later end up in Iran.
Labels: German-Iranian trade, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:37 PM
1 Comments:
The UK uni boycotts, with the silence of the urbane and sophisticated science and tech profs and communities, made me realize about a decade ago, two things about the Euros... One bunch want to "finish the job", as Carl outlines (I've actually known about these people in Germany first hand since the early '70s). The other group (they overlap a lot) wants to undercut Israel's technological achievement rate. They are envious and just stay silent as this stuff goes on. Obama is helping in this process by opening a path for the Muslim Bros and al Shabaab. And he's won the trifecta by sabotaging the U.S. Congress, working it into this point where they will absolutely GUT the U.S. military with this auto-cut thing. I heard (in person!) Herbert Marcuse at UC San Diego in the '70s talking exactly about doing this... he postulated that the U.S. military can't be taken apart from outside. That the littleMarxists needed to get into positions in the govt and take down the U.S. Military from inside the govt (and needed to get rid of capitalism at the same time). People are refusing to look at what they have voted in. We need to vote them out. And everybody in America needs to get off the couch and work at this - make sure the non-marxists get out and vote, even if the candidates are imperfect...
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