Israel Matzav

Germany hosting German-Iranian business forum

For reasons that the graph at top left makes obvious, Germany is addicted to trade with Iran. And despite the outcries and protests from the rest of the World - all admittedly uncoordinated and weak - Germany continues to be Iran's number 1 trading partner. But now the Germans have done something that anyone who knows the situation in Iran must find offensive.

On Tuesday, a conference is taking place in Berlin under the title “Economic Congress: Iranian Business Women Power.” The event is being organized by EIVENT (European- Iranian Ventures), and is allegedly being sponsored by German Association for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (BVMW), although the latter denies sponsoring it.

“For Iranian business women to be honored in Germany – while their sisters in Iran are humiliated, silenced, repressed and stoned – is a slap at human rights,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“Now Iranian women are to be used as a pretext even on German soil. Any German political representative attending this fair will be violating the sanctions regimes against Iran established by Germany, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations,” Samuels said.

Asked about the BVMW sponsoring the pro-Iran trade event, Eberhard Vogt, a spokesman for BVMW, on Saturday issued an e-mail statement to The Jerusalem Post. “The BVMW is neither the organizer nor host of the company Congress Iranian Business Women Power in Berlin. The BVMW expressly barred the organizer from using the association’s logo and received confirmation of the ban,” he wrote.

The BVMW conducts “trade with all business partners across the world” and maintains “strict political neutrality,” the BVMW said. “It is, therefore, absurd to maintain that Germany’s leading mid-sized [business] association is violating sanctions against Iran or glossing over the situation of women in Iran.”

Dr. Dieter Graumann, head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, however, blasted German companies in late October for failing to sever business deals with Iran. Midsized firms are largely responsible for the bulk of German investment and trade with Iran.

Read the whole thing.

There's something bizarre about the country that perpetrated the last Holocaust joining together with the country that both denies the last one and aspires to perpetrate the next one in a business partnership. Bizarre and loathsome. It's long past time to call the Germans on it.

Labels: German-Iranian trade, Holocaust denial, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:29 PM