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Only hours before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu touched down in Berlin for talks last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration announced that it would stop pumping billions of euros' worth of crude oil payments into Iran's coffers.

The announcement came after news surfaced in the German press that Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has allowed the Hamburg-based European-Iranian trade bank (EIH) and Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, to process oil payments from India to the National Iranian Oil Company, a financial arm of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The US has sought to block India's Asia Clearing Union from putting through the 9 billion-euro payment, and France, the US and the UK have, over the years, worked to isolate Iran's energy sector.