Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens reports that despite German intelligence reports last week that Iran has attempted to purchase nuclear technology in Germany since signing the JCPOA, the Obama administration appears determined to 'lock in' the Iran deal to prevent a future President from unraveling it.
All this was enough to prompt Angela Merkel
to warn the Bundestag last week that Iran “continued to develop its
rocket program in conflict with relevant provisions of the U.N. Security
Council.” Don’t expect German sanctions, but at least the chancellor is
living in the reality zone.
As for the Obama administration, not
so much. For the past year it has developed a narrative—spoon-fed to
the reporters and editorial writers Ben Rhodes publicly mocks as dopes and dupes—that Iran has met all its obligations under the deal, and now deserves extra cookies in the form of access to U.S. dollars, Boeing jets, U.S. purchases of
Iranian heavy water (thereby subsidizing its nuclear program), and
other concessions the administration last year promised Congress it
would never grant.
“We still have sanctions on Iran for its
violations of human rights, for its support for terrorism, and for its
ballistic-missile program, and we will continue to enforce those
sanctions vigorously,” Mr. Obama said in January. Whatever.
The administration is now weighing whether
to support Iran’s membership in the World Trade Organization. That
would neutralize a future president’s ability to impose sanctions on
Iran, since WTO rules would allow Tehran to sue Washington for
interfering with trade. The administration has also pushed the Financial
Action Task Force, an international body that enforces
anti-money-laundering standards, to ease pressure on Iran, which FATF did last month by suspending some restrictions for the next year.
And then there’s the Boeing deal to sell $17.6 billion worth of jets to Iran, which congressional Republicans led by Illinois’s Pete Roskam are trying to stop. Iran uses its civilian fleet to ferry weapons and fighters to its terrorist clients in Syria and Lebanon.
“The
administration is trying to lock in the Iran deal and prevent a future
president from doing anything, including pushing back on Iran’s malign
behavior,” says the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark
Dubowitz, who knows more about Iran sanctions than anyone in Washington.
“Instead of curbing Iran’s worst behavior, the administration
effectively facilitates it.”
Last night, the House of Representatives voted to ban US aircraft sales (i.e. Boeing's) to Iran.
The first amendment [to the Appropriations Bill] prevents the Office of Foreign Assets Control from using funds to authorize the license necessary for the aircraft to be sold to Iran. The second one blocks loans from U.S. financial institutions for the purchase of planes that can be adapted for military use.
"Iran systemically uses commercial aircraft to spread death, destruction and mayhem, and we can do something about it," [Representative Peter] Roskam [R-Il] said on the House floor.
...
Airbus had reached an agreement in January to sell Tehran 118 planes. Because some of the aircraft components are made in the U.S., the deal was awaiting approval from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The day after the approval of the amendments, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said step was "incompatible" with the country's nuclear deal with the U.S. Under the deal, America lifted the economic sanctions previously levied on Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear ambitions.
“We have nothing to do with U.S. internal affairs,” Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. “We consider the government of the United States to be responsible for implementing the country’s commitments” under the accord.
Of course, the bill still has to pass the Senate, which effectively approved the Iran deal last year in a party-line vote. And then it might have to override an Obama veto. And Obama doesn't need Congressional approval to approve Iran joining the WTO, although Congress can make it difficult for him according to Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich, whom I asked that question.
My bet is that sometime between November 8 and January 20, Obama will allow those jet sales to go ahead and announce US support for Iran's application to join the WTO. After all, it's part of his legacy.
The second report, released last week by Germany's
domestic intelligence agency, is less ambiguous. The agency, the Federal
Office for the Protection of the Constitution, confirmed to us that Iran continues to seek illicit technology for its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.
Iran has had a long history of trying to obtain
nuclear technology from German companies, particularly by seeking ways
to transport merchandise in circumvention of international sanctions.
Since November 2013, Tehran has sought industry computers, high-speed
cameras, cable fiber, and pumps for its nuclear and missile program. It
appears that Iran's readiness to negotiate does not reflect any
substantive policy change. Rather, it is a diplomatic tactic retreat
forced by economic distress, not a strategic rethinking of its
priorities.
All the more reason not to remove sanctions in reliance on being able to 'snap' them back into place.
Iran's cheating should give Western negotiators
additional resolve to impose ironclad guarantees in the agreement. They
should compel Iran to reveal its past activities, including its
post-JPOA procurement efforts, and impose tough, intrusive, "anytime,
anywhere" inspections before sanctions are suspended, let alone lifted.
I don't believe there is such a thing as 'ironclad guarantees' in this situation.
Instead, the lack of reporting to the U.N. despite
evidence of cheating suggests a lack of resolve on the part of Western
nations, and their willingness to downplay all but the most egregious
violations. This does not bode well for the future. If Western powers
are reluctant to penalize Iran for trying to evade sanctions because
they’re afraid of spoiling the negotiations, what will happen in the
future when Western powers have even more invested in preserving an
agreement?
I've reported on this blog before regarding the massive amounts of trade with Iran by Germany in general, and by electronics giant Siemens in particular. Things are so bad that at one point, then-Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz proposed barring Israelis from investing in Siemens. It now turns out that some Israelis have made a different kind of investment in Siemens. Or rather, that Siemens has made an investment in them (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
The gag order was lifted today that the Israel Securities Authority
and Israel Police questioned under caution four men on suspicion of
involvement in receiving $16 million in bribes from Siemens AG (NYSE:
SI; XETRA: SIE) to rig the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22)
tender for power station turbines. The four men are former Siemens
Israel Energy and Industry Division manager Oren Aharonson; Oakfield
Ltd. owner Shlomo Daniel,
Aharonson's brother-in-law; forex trader Anton
Mitchell Dalin, an associate of Aharonson; and Haim Bar-Nir, who served
as IEC planning division deputy manager unit at the time, and recently
left the company.
Former District Court Judge Dan Cohen is already serving a six-year
sentence in the case, for taking a NIS 4 million bribe from Siemens.
Aharonson was the state's witness against the judge.
Aharonson
and his associates are suspected of being the middlemen in transferring
Siemens' $16 million bribe to Bar-Nir and Dalin, through various foreign
bank accounts. Aharonson is also suspected of obstructing the
investigation and obstruction of justice by not handing the police
information about the bribe. Aharonson and Daniel are also suspected of
being beneficiaries of the bribe through commissions they took as its
facilitators.
The bribery case in Israel is part of a worldwide scandal at Siemens involving $1.4 billion in bribes to facilitate deals.
I've discussed what makes Israelis behave so selfishly here, among other places.
In any event, one cannot help but wonder whether there is a connection between money taken from Iran and money used to bribe Israel. Yes, Israel, because in case you've forgotten, Israel Electric Corporation is a government company.
Jonathan Schanzer points out what is perhaps the best reason for the new sanctions legislation proposed by Senators Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez: Removing the ambiguity that is leading to a mad rush to invest in Iran.
But, as the Daily Beast's Eli Lake and Josh Rogin
recently reported, the administration's designations have trailed off
significantly in recent months, even though the JPA explicitly allows
for more designations under the existing regime. Indeed, before the
election of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani in June, no less than 183
entities were designated. Following the election of Rouhani, widely
touted as a moderate, there have been only 29 such designations.
In other words, it's highly unlikely that the National Security
Council, State, Treasury and Justice Departments just happened to
approve these most recent designations in the wake of the Geneva deal.
In all probability, they got the coveted interagency thumbs up weeks or
months ago. But the administration likely held off on designating new
entities for fear that rapprochement with Iran was still new and
fragile.
With an angry Congress openly questioning the
administration's will to hold the line on sanctions, these latest
designations were designed to prove a point: that the White House can be
serious about enforcing sanctions while also negotiating their end in a
final nuclear deal.
If that sounds like a fine line to walk, that's because it is.
Actively punishing Iran for its mendacity while trying to selectively
reduce other sanctions (in this case, automotive, petrochemicals and
precious metals) for the sake of diplomacy projects two competing
messages.
It should come as no surprise that this dual approach has inspired
the confidence of neither Iran nor Congress. Indeed, the only actors out
there who are heartened by Washington's conflicted policies are the companies eyeing investments in Iran.
They see confusion, and therefore ambiguity. And that's a whole lot
better than the investment environment of just a few months ago, when
Iran appeared to be completely off limits.
The new Senate bill will the provide Washington with an insurance
policy against Iranian deception. If it passes, it would legislate the
imposition of new sanctions the moment Iran violates the terms of the
interim deal.
That would immediately re-inject fear into the equation and deter
firms looking to cash in on the potential growth opportunities in Iran.
More importantly, it would untangle Washington's impossibly hedged Iran
policy. And though the White House will insist otherwise, it promises to
rearm the administration with the clear leverage that ultimately
brought Iran to the table in the first place.
In more great news, Iran claims to have a new missile defense system to protect its nuclear weapons program against attack. The missile is called the Sayyad-2.
Missile support
In static position, the Sayyad-2 is mounted to a
launcher station as the Russian made SA-2 missile. The basic design
qualifies as semi-mobile, requiring several hours to set up or redeploy a
battery. Each missile is carried by a semi-trailer towed by a
Mercedes-Benz 2624 6x6 truck, and needs to be loaded onto a fixed
launcher before firing. The loading usually takes about 5 minutes but
this really depends on the training and experience of missile operators.
Missile
The
Sayyad-2 is a two stage guided missile, with a large solid propellant
booster stage fitted with four very large delta fins.The warhead of the
Sayyad-2 weighs 200 kg and is a HE internally grooved fragmentation type
with proximity, contact and command-type fuzing available. The Sayad 2
fligt at 3,600 km/h and has a range of 80 - 100 km and includes ECCM
(Electronic Counter-Counter Measures) equipment.
Combat use
The
Sayyad-2 missile, considering it's medium range can be apllied for
targets, rather in low or high altitude. also it has capability for
protecting the economic, political and social centers. Sayyad-2 is
capable of destroying targets with low Radar Cross Section (RCS) at low
and medium altitudes. The main mission of this missile, can be defined
for destruction of bombers and reconnaissance aircraft.
Let's go to the videotape.
Thanks again to the Germans for providing the trucks. I guess one holocaust wasn't enough for them.
German companies supplied Syria’s regime with dual-usage chemicals,
which can be applied for military and civilian use, as late as 2011.
The chemicals involved – sodium fluoride, hydrofluoric acid and
ammonium hydrogen fluoride – can be used to manufacture sarin, the
deadly nerve gas used during the August 21 attack on the edge of
Damascus, which killed more than 1,400 people, according to the US
government.
The firms delivered larger volumes of these chemicals
than previously disclosed in September, German broadcaster ARD reported
last week.
A week before Chancellor Angela Merkel’s September 22
election victory, a Left Party deputy revealed that German companies,
under successive coalition governments between 1998 and 2006, supplied
Syria with chemicals.
Merkel told ARD television before her
election victory, “We are of course looking into all allegations on
this, but from what we can see so far the export license was for civil
use.”
According to the new ARD report, German companies delivered
roughly 350 tons of dual-use chemicals to Syrian President Bashar
Assad’s regime between 1998 and 2011. The previous known total of
German-sold chemicals to Syria was 135 tons between 2002 and 2006.
The exports included 270 tons of fluoride, which is key in the manufacture of sarin.
Given Germany's booming trade with Iran, is anyone really surprised?
Head of German Green party 'high fives' Iranian ambassador
The head of Germany's Green party, Claudia Roth, is under fire for 'high fiving' the Iranian ambassador to Germany, Ali Reza Sheikh Attar. Akhtar is accused of massacring Kurds when he was governor of their region between 1980 and 1985.
Roth’s pro-Iranian behavior
prompted Germany’s largest daily paper, Bild, to dub her “Loser of the Day,” on
its front page because of her action. This category is reserved for people who
engage in shameless, criminal, or embarrassing conduct.
Henryk M. Broder,
a popular columnist for the daily Die Welt, said Roth belongs “in the hall of
shame of politics” for her high five.
Nasrin Amirsedghi, a prominent
Iranian- German intellecutal who has written about human rights in the Islamic
Republic, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, “It is an open secret that the
Green Party lobbies intensively for the mullahs in Germany.”
She added
that a “high five normally serves as an the expression of satisfaction about
success. And [the Green Party] has contributed greatly to the success of keeping
an inhumane system going in Iran since 1979.”
Actually, the only surprise here is that anyone is upset with her. Germany is Iran's largest trading partner (a position Turkey may soon assume but not because German trade with Iran is declining) and the Red-Green alliance is nothing new, unfortunately.
And you thought the Obama administration was bad.... In a review of Europe's relations with Israel in the upcoming year, Benny Weinthal quotes senior research fellow Tommy Steiner, who says that Europe is so obsessed with the 'peace process' because it has nothing else to offer. Ouch!
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has done the opposite with regard to
Europe. His blunt comment last week, “What the UN says doesn’t interest
me,” could apply to the Europeans, including Israel’s main EU partner,
Germany, which abandoned him during the November 29 General Assembly
vote on the PLO upgrade to non-member state status. Netanyahu directed
his salty rejoinder to the UN’s (and the EU’s) permanent pastime:
opposing apartment construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Tommy
Steiner, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and
Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, wrote to The
Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, “It appears Europe’s near-obsession with the
peace process and the settlements stems from a belief that it has
nothing to offer in addressing the other, more pressing challenges.
While I personally believe that the resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is urgent and important for Israel’s
national security, the European fixation on settlements has not only
failed to yield any beneficial outcomes, it has been counterproductive.”
For
Steiner, Europe’s blind spots consist of failing to confront the rise
of an imperialistic Iran in the Middle East, and the growth of terror
and crime networks in Sinai and in a post-Bashar Assad Syria.
“As
an Israeli who actually believes in the European project and in
anchoring Israel in the West and enhancing EU-Israel relations, one can
only hope that EU officialdom would acquire a more realistic, in-depth
and broad understanding of the Middle East and the principal forces
shaping the region,” said Steiner.
Benny Weinthal reviews German Chancellor Angela Merkel's record on Israel and gives it a decidedly mixed review.
In fact, she
is the only German chancellor to have gone on the rhetorical offensive during an
Israeli war of self-defense and aligned her government with the Jewish state
against radical Islamic terror.
Her predecessors, like the Social
Democrat Willy Brandt, only made empty promises of support to Israel. Take the
Yom Kippur War in 1973 for example. While Brandt said Germany had Israel’s back,
he denied the US the right to use the Bremerhaven harbor to ship sorely needed
military arms to Israel during its existential war with neighboring Arab
countries.
Merkel, in contrast, delivered sophisticated Dolphin
submarines to Israel and is slated to continue furnishing such military hardware
to Israel in order to maintain Jerusalem’s critical deterrence capability
against an increasingly jingoistic Iran, to name just one hostile country in the
region.
However, Merkel’s flip-flops center largely around the issue of
settlement construction, the upgrade of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization’s entity at the UN and an anti- Israel Bundestag
measure.
Her administration endorsed a Lebanon-sponsored UN Security
Council resolution in 2011 that condemned Israeli settlement construction as
“illegal.”
Moreover, in 2010, she appeared to make no effort to convince
her Christian Democratic Union party members in parliament, as well as her
coalition partners from the Bavarian Christian Social Union and Free Democrats
parties, to vote against a Bundestag resolution that slammed Israel for
intercepting the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara ship, a confrontation that resulted
in the deaths of nine alleged Turkish terrorists.
...
Despite her government’s vote against an PLO
upgrade at the UNESCO in Paris last year, she chose to abstain on Thursday at
the UN.
From Israel’s perspective, Merkel’s stances on PLO statehood
measures, which seek to bypass direct negotiations with Israel, along with her
wobbly positions in UN international forums and when handling party deputies in
the Bundestag that bash Israel, have represented a marked lack of consistency.
They are definitely not the worst in Europe, but Benny also leaves out the fact that Merkel has done little or nothing to stop German trade with Iran.
The
possible violation deals with a financial transaction with the Islamic Republic
in US dollars. Deutsche Bank says it will now cooperate with the authorities,
though it had previously refused to comment on the allegations.
In
August, The New York Times reported that the US authorities had launched
investigations into international credit organizations for their involvement in
bank deals totaling billions of dollars with Iran and Sudan.
Germany’s
bank system has been plagued at times by Iranian financial scandals. Last year,
the German business daily The Handelsblatt reported that the country’s Foreign
Ministry and Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) had engaged in a complex,
sanctions-busting transaction with the Europäisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH).
The EIH, an Iranian bank that the US says helped finance Tehran’s nuclear
proliferation efforts and alleged missile program, was placed on the EU’s terror
list after the scandal surfaced.
According to that report, the German
Foreign Ministry green-lighted a 1.5 billion-euro oil payment from India to be
transferred to Tehran via the EIH. The US Treasury Department issued a sharp
rebuke to the German government for facilitating trade with Iran.
The Handelsblatt reported at the time that “although [Iranian] President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s country is subject to strict economic sanctions by the EU and USA,
Germany helps in circumventing them.”
Germany is on course to reach a
nearly 4 billion- euro bilateral trade volume with Iran in 2012. Last year, the
total bilateral trade numbers showed nearly 4 billion euros worth of trade with
Tehran. Israeli, American, British and French officials have expressed
frustration with Germany’s failure to rope in its flourishing trade relations
with the Islamic Republic.
For all those who think sanctions can help avoid a war over Iran's nuclear capability, it would help if the sanctions were taken seriously. 4 billion euros of annual trade is not taking sanctions seriously, whether or not violations are ever proven.
Speaking of Germany, four people have been arrested and charged with violating sanctions against Iran by selling parts for a heavy water reactor to Iranians under pretext that they were being sold to neighboring Azerbaijan.
Prosecutors said some 90 customs officers arrested the men - one German and three with dual German and Iranian citizenship, at their homes in the northern cities of Hamburg and Oldenburg and the eastern town of Weimar, and searched flats and offices.
"In 2010 and 2011 the suspects are believed to have helped in the delivery of special valves for the construction of a heavy water reactor in Iran and therefore to have broken the Iran embargo," prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday.
To avoid export controls, the men are suspected of having described the customer as a firm based in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
"The deliveries were part of an order worth several million euros which Iran was trying to use to secure the necessary valve technology to make a heavy water reactor," said the prosecutors.
The men were therefore suspected of breaking Germany's law on foreign trade and breaching military weapons controls.
I wonder how many of the four were Revolutionary Guards affiliated with the Iranian embassy in Berlin. That's standard operating procedure for Iran.
Germans selling tunneling equipment and other 'dual use' equipment to Iran
On Sunday, I published the results of a poll that indicated that most Iranians would gladly trade their country's nuclear program for relief from sanctions. And yet, the sanctions continue, Iranians are more squeezed and the nuclear program continues. Why? Aside from the fact that Iranians cannot overthrow their government without outside help (which was denied to them by President Hussein Obama in 2009), the fact remains that the most important sanctions - the ones that would hit the nuclear program itself and not just Iran's purchasing power - continue to be violated by countries around the world. Take, for instance, Germany, which is selling tunneling equipment(!) to Iran.
The Jerusalem Post has obtained an uncensored list from late 2011, showing hundreds of German and Iranian enterprises in a flourishing trade relationship.
This is despite Iran’s construction of Fordow, a medium-level uranium enrichment facility buried into the side of a mountain near Qom, and the fact that the German equipment could be used to build more underground nuclear facilities.
Some businesses have asked that their names be removed from the list to avoid damage to their reputations.
One company named is Baden-Württemberg-based engineering giant Herrenknecht AG, which appears to be delivering heavy tunneling equipment to Iran – some of which is promoted as having the capability of “drilling down to depths of 6,000 meters.”
In response to Post inquiries, an unidentified representative of the company wrote via email on Friday that it has “comprehensively ensured that Herrenknecht excavation engineering and services solely reach projects which clearly pursue civil applications [metro tunnel construction, sewage pipes and water supply lines].”
After such projects are completed, it cannot be determined if Iran intends to or already has used the equipment for its nuclear facilities.
In the latest of a series of anti-Israel measures by German NGO's, the German branch of a group that describes itself as an 'international Catholic peace movement' has called for boycotting settlement productsall Israeli productsJews (Hat Tip: Bad Blue).
The German branch of Pax Christi, which describes itself as an "international Catholic peace movement," issued a press release dated May 22, in which it urged German consumers not to buy goods from Israel as long as it remains unclear whether they are produced in the "settlements" or in "Israel."
A two-page flyer for the campaign, which uses the slogan "Occupation Tastes Bitter" (Besatzung schmeckt bitter), states: "Israeli settlements on occupied territory violate Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. Whoever contributes to the profitability of these settlements contributes to the violation of human rights." The flyer also encourages German consumers to report "questionable" Israeli products on a website called www.lebensmittelklarheit.de.
Although Pax Christi claims it is not seeking a blanket boycott of Israeli products, the NGO's use of vague and sweeping language, plus the fact that there are no special labels to distinguish products made in the so-called occupied territories, does make it a de facto boycott of everything made in Israel.
Pax Christi's boycott campaign has received political backing from Albrecht Schröter, the Social Democratic mayor of the eastern German city of Jena in the state of Thuringia. A June 1 article in the local newspaper Thüringische Landeszeitung quotes Schröter as saying his goal "is to demand mandatory labeling of goods from illegal Israeli settlements that occupy Palestinian territory."
But critics have accused Schröter (and Pax Christi) of issuing one-sided statements against Israel, and of giving the false impression that Israel is a country that systematically disregards international law and human rights.
Others say the obsession with Israel while human rights are being systematically abused in Muslim countries such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia is a reflection of anti-Semitism.
There's much more. Read the whole thing. And as you read it, consider this: Germany is Iran's largest trading partner. This boycott definitely passes the Sharansky tests.
A German-Austrian company confirmed on Monday that it is providing 'advice and planning work' to Iran in connection with an oil pipeline from Iran to Pakistan, which is likely in violation of US and EU sanctions on Iran.
“Advisory and planning engineers” are working on the project, Rüdiger Ophoven, a spokesman for ILF’s gas and oil department, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. He stressed that ILF is only involved in the Pakistani side of the project.
The Pakistan paper The Nation reported on Sunday that “according to the secretary of petroleum, Pakistan has offered $250 million to a German company, ILF Engineering, for laying the gas pipeline inside its territory.
The gas pipeline would be completed till 2014, the secretary added.”
Iran’s Persian- and English-language press reported extensively on the pipeline project and Germany’s role in its development.
When asked about the value of ILF’s contract, Ophoven told the Post that such a project is “less than 10 million euros.”
He said he did not know if ILF’s legal department had examined whether the deal violated US, UN or EU sanctions.
The United States pressed Pakistan in 2009 to refrain from entering into a pipeline agreement with Iran. However, the Pakistani government moved forward with its Iranian partners.
Austria and Germany are considered by experts in Europe to be the weakest links in the enforcement of the sanctions regime targeting Iran. Germany remains Iran’s most important EU trade partner, with an annual bilateral trade of roughly 4 billion euros.
Ophoven could not confirm or deny whether German regulators had approved the deal with Pakistan.
But these sanctions are going to stop Iran dead in its tracks if we only give them enough time - eh Mr. Obama?
If you think that sanctions are having any effect on Germany's €4 billion annual trading with Iran, I suggest that you think again. A German technical university is sponsoring a program which markets dual-use construction materials to Iran. And the German government is paying for it.
According to an invitation to the Iranian event, which was obtained by the Post, Berlin’s Technical University (TU) sent an email last Tuesday titled “Company Congress” to students and other potential parties.
Yousef Chappi, the head of Iran’s economic department at the embassy, wrote on the invitation that the purpose of the event is “to make German firms in the construction sector aware of the present potential with new technology and the basis for cooperation and the signing of joint contracts.”
The invitation-only event, which took place last Wednesday, was shrouded in secrecy and required a pre-registration. Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a leading expert on German-Iranian relations, translated a Persian- language report in the Islamic Republic News Agency, which cited a comment after the event from Iran’s Ambassador Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, about the construction trade conference in Berlin.
Germany is Iran’s most important European trading partner, with bilateral commerce hovering around an annual 4 billion euros. The construction trade event raises questions about violations of EU and UN sanctions because the merchandise and work could possibly be used to develop nuclear underground and above-ground facilities. Iran’s government frequently uses Western “dual-use” technology for both military and civilian purposes.
Read the whole thing. If President Obama wants Israel to trust him to take action to stop Iran, he has to put a stop to this sort of thing. But he's not. As I noted in an earlier post, President Obama has ignored a Congressional mandate to impose sanctions on companies located outside the US that violate sanctions against Iran.
Time and again, the President of the United States has failed to act to enforce and implement sanctions against Iran. Obama's failure to act shows that his support for sanctions is half-hearted and insincere at best. And he expects Israel to trust him to take military action when the sanctions don't work? What could go wrong?
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gee - do you think that maybe these Ukrainian investor groups might be acting as fronts for Iran?
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.
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.
Top Bundestag lawmaker urges Germany to withdraw from Durban III
German Prime Minister Angela Merkel may be having a hard time deciding whether Germany, which professes to be Israel's best friend, belongs at the Durban III conference. But other people in Germany have no problems deciding. They think Germany should join the boycott.
“It can be anticipated that the memorial event on September 22 will be misused as a platform to defame the State of Israel, as happened at the Durban Conference in 2001 and the Durban Review Conference in Geneva in 2009,” Philipp Missfelder, a historian and foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told The Jerusalem Post.
“Germany should refrain from participating in this conference, as it did in 2009.
We should not support with our attendance a conference at which our partner Israel is denounced as an apartheid state.”
Missfelder appears to be the first deputy to break with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle’s plan to participate in Durban III. Missfelder, who turned 32 on Thursday, is viewed as a rising star in the CDU. He is an advocate of strong relations with the Jewish state and the United States.
...
Asked about Missfelder’s call for Germany to skip Durban III, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Post on Thursday that the ministry “has read very attentively the statements from deputy Missfelder.”
The spokesman reiterated the ministry’s position that the German government is working to “prevent the Durban process from being used to pillory Israel.”
A spokeswoman from Merkel’s office told the Post that the Foreign Ministry’s statement is the “position of the federal government.”
And while Germany's government is pretending that it can stop the anti-Semitism from controlling Durban III, Germany's Jewish community feels otherwise.
In a sign of growing tension over Durban III with Germany’s organized Jewish community, Dr. Dieter Graumann, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the local media that it is long overdue that Germany boycott Durban III.
Durban III is a “disgusting show trial” that once again will place Israel alone in the dock, he said.
Graumann wrote a letter calling for Westerwelle to pull out of the conference because it is a “festival of hostility toward Jews.” It is imperative that Germany show clarity and consistency in terms of combating loathing of Jews, he said. “Germany must not give this hate campaign the appearance of legitimacy.”
Responding to Westerwelle’s decision to ignore his letter and boycott call, Graumann told the DAPD wire service on Monday, “Maybe something will still come – better still, something will happen.”
The Foreign Ministry in Berlin told the Post that Graumann’s letter will be answered.
Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, is split. On the one hand, there are deputies who support strengthening ties with Israel and the US. On the other hand, there are CDU-CSU deputies who promote relations with Israel’s enemies such as Iran.
There are some Germans for whom money - as in trade with Iran - speaks louder than anything else. It's a pity that we don't have an American President who is capable of leading Germany to join most of the rest of the world in sanctioning Iran.
A bribe to prevent Israel from protesting too loudly?
Germany is providing Israel with a sixth Dolphin class submarine, at a discount of 135 million Euros. Why the discount? Here's a report that suggests that the discount is a bribe to convince Israel not to protest too loudly against German trade with Iran. And that it's not the first time it's happened.
One theory is that Germany "donated" the first two after it was discovered in Israel that the Scud missiles launched by Saddam at Israel had German parts that helped extend the range. It certainly is true that Israel quickly hid the remains of the Scuds after initially asking Americans to look at the foreign technology involved.
Does it mean anything that the deal for the sixth subsidized Dolphin was announced after a group of Israeli parliamentarians narrowly missed colliding with a group of Iranian parliamentarians in the Bundestag last month? The delegation of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee sent an angry letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle protesting the Iranian visit.
They did not note - but we will - that that the Iranians, accompanied by Iran's representative to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh and Iran's ambassador in Germany Alireza Sheikh Attar, spoke at a conference in the German Foreign Office and went to visit the German city of Weimar - sister city of Iran's Shiraz. While in Weimar, the delegation declined to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp, prompting the only saving grace of the whole debacle - the city fathers of Weimar refused to meet with the Iranians.
It begs the question: why are Iranian government officials hosted and feted by the German government? Germany is aware of Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities and long-range missiles, and multi-year deception of the IAEA. Why is Soltanieh, the chief deceiver, invited to speak by the German Foreign Ministry? Germany certainly is aware of the record number of executions this year in Iran, including public hangings and the execution of two minors. Why is Attar invited to speak instead of being called in for a demarche or a PNG?
Reasonable people should ask how the mullahs remain able to do what they do. There are international banking and trade sanctions that should have stifled Iran's ability to pay for its nuclear and missile programs and to pay for funding Hezbollah and Hamas - those things are not cheap. Yet Iran never seems to come to the end of its financial rope, never seems to be short. The United States is in the midst of a debt crisis and is planning to slash the defense budget, but Iran is testing new and better missiles.
Germany's $4 billion-plus trade with Iran (2010) must help.
Taking bribes from the Germans while they act as enablers of Iran's nuclear program strikes me as penny wise and pound foolish. Germany is Iran's top trading partner and has pointedly refused to do anything to change that situation. They seem to be downright infatuated with the Iranians. Instead of accepting bribes from them to keep quiet about it, we should be calling the Germans out at every opportunity. They've already perpetrated one Holocaust. Should we be complacent as they help in perpetrating another, God forbid?
Robin Shepherd reports that despite the misgivings of the man whose name is on the report, the Goldstone Report is likely to continue its passage through the United Nations, with the support of the European Union.
One well-placed European diplomat told The Commentator on Saturday that all the signs this week from major European countries and from the United Nations itself suggested that hostility to the Jewish state remained so strong that even Goldstone’s remarkable comments, made inthe Washington Poston April 1, could not stop the report’s momentum in its passage through UN bodies:
“Just look around you,” the diplomat said. “The messages from major European countries as well as what people are saying in the halls of the United Nations all indicate that this thing cannot be stopped.”
“The Europeans in particular are keen not to upset the Arab world at a time of turmoil and as several leading countries are involved in military actions in Libya.”
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Despite this, the British Foreign Office said, in an exclusive to The Commentator last week, that it had no intention of calling for a withdrawal of the report since other “credible organisations” had corroborated Goldstone’s original allegations.
The Commentator has also learned that a very high ranking official in the German foreign ministry had been asked in Berlin on Thursday whether his country would now call for the withdrawal of the Goldstone Report and had pointedly refused to give any such assurance.
With all due respect to my European readers, your governments are a bunch of Jew-hating anti-Semites who have not changed much since the early 1940's. One can only wonder whether the Nazis will return to power in the next election in Germany, and whether the next Prime Minister in the UK will be a Muslim supporter of Sheikh Qaradawi.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
