As an Iranian-born German, I would like to say that the stain of fascism during 1933-1945 in Germany reminds me of the today’s IRI in Iran. Despite this remorse stained having another version of fascism, Germany has tried to maintain its good relations with the Islamo-fascist IRI in a rather “critical dialogue” of openly limited diplomacy and commerce and has even increased them after the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Germany’s lucrative dealings reached billions of dollars during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, while at the same time German firms supplied Saddam’s industrial and military war machine, especially chemical weapons used against both Iranian troops and civilian Iraqi Kurds. Until 1988, German export of technology and military parts to Iran were over DM 45 billion (Deutsch Mark, old German currency= half euro).
After the war, Iranian infrastructures ruined partly by German weapons in the hands of Iraqis, needed German technology to rebuild. Germany reached a primary trading partner with Iran, and remains still Iran’s greatest trading partner, with total goods worth about 3.6 billion euros imported into Iran despite the increasing standoff between Iran and the West. The IRI is the one sore spot in an otherwise highly cooperative EU. Since the Iranian revolution, the EU’s share of Iran’s total imports is over 40%. EU trade with Iran has even expanded since Iran’s secret nuclear programme was exposed. Russia and China fall far behind with only 15% of Iran’s total imports. Under such economic factors, the perspective of moral factors like human rights, IRI’s sponsored terrorism, and the fate of oppressed people in Iran do not seem to play an important role for the EU.
Although, Germany is the first European partner of Iran, the German-Iranian relations were periodically affected by the following events:
–Mykonos Court in Germany– in 1992 several Iranian dissidents were assassinated by an IRI’s terrorist commando in Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. The court condemned many IRI’s seniors for plotting the act.
–In revenge, a German detainee, or hostage in Iran, Mr. Helmut Hofer, was condemned to a few years in detention for his out-of- marriage relation with a Muslim woman.
–The sensible conflict, which normally should have effectively violated the German basic law, is a vast IRI’s campaign beginning in 2005 to deny the historical facts of Holocaust.
However, despite these cool winds between the two countries, despite a withdrawal of some German banks from Iran–(Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, and Dresdner Bank) all due to US pressure. Germany dreams of further better economic relations with the IRI.
Around 12% of international joint ventures in Iran are German, with a turnover of half a billion euros ($620 million). Some German businesses have invested directly in Iran. Linde AG, for instance, has invested almost half a billion euros in the Iranian oil industry. German carmakers such as Volkswagen and Audi have made their entries onto the Iranian business market with their assembly facilities. German firms are promised to hold 100% shares from the ongoing privatised Iranian economic sectors, the rate is promised by IRI’s officials instead of 49% believed.
German opinion-makers have always indoctrinated a paradigm shift for this immoral trade with Mullahs. They pretend the trade as “good relations between two friend nations!” In fact, the relations between the two countries are uniquely based on lucrative interests for states and firms of both sides, while both sides ignore the ongoing deterioration of human rights conditions in Iran. Daily executions, amputations, stoning, attacks on women, youths, and other thinkers do not play any factor in these immoral trades. The economic exchange is not between two nations, but, in fact, between German government and an illegitimate Iranian regime exploiting Iranian wealth for their own interests or, worse, the costs of their parasitic lives.
According to some statistics of IRI’s outsiders, the line of poverty further sinks in Iran. The poor are continuously poorer than in Bangladesh or Africa, whereas the rich are richer than in Germany.
The trade takes such a determined value that no German official dares
talking on the permanent violations of human rights in Iran; the same Mrs Merkel who criticised the human rights situation in her recent trip to China is very reluctant about the same human rights in Iran. Although she was born and educated under the German totalitarian regime and rebelled against totalitarianism in East Germany, she has probably not realised the other versions of totalitarian systems. Her conflict with the IRI is not based on IRI’s totalitarianism, but the international atomic conflict over IRI’s atomic ambitions; therefore such conflicts can be solved when the current atomic conflict is removed.
German officials, from ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl to social democrat ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, have never openly condemned the IRI because of its permanent violations to Human Rights in Iran.
According to IRI’s officials, foreign investment in Iran rose to $10.5 bln in the last Iranian (March 21, 2006-March 20, 2007) compared to $4.5 bln the year before. To attract foreign capital, the IRI promises foreign investors with insurance coverage to encourage them to invest in Iran–although, the private sectors remain in the hands of closed devotees of the regime, and outsider investors, especially non-Muslims can never take the helm from business-generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, or the Mullahs heading the Islamic foundations.
The United Nations has imposed two sets of sanctions against Iran with little result. In December 2006, the UN imposed trade sanctions on sensitive nuclear materials and technology. Then, in March 2007, it tightened those sanctions by imposing a ban on arms sales and freezing more assets. The fact is that Mullahs continue to ignore sanctions with little consequence for the regime even though Iran’s economy is stagnating. Consumer prices are rising rapidly, unemployment approaches 30 percent and Ahmadinejad has not redistributed oil profits to the poor as promised, but the regime continues to invest in terrorism, nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
It is worth mentioning that although Germany has been Iran’s number one economic partner, it does not rank higher than thirty-fifth on the list of Germany’s economic partners abroad. Germany does not really need Iranian goods and can import its oil from many other oil rich countries.In this perspective, Germany must supply nothing but medical goods to Iran. This is the only moral trade; the other domains of trade between the two countries must be suspended in the name of Hundreds of thousands of IRI’s victims and millions of oppressed Iranians.
To fulfil this vacuum, Germany is expected to extend its economic relations with relatively democratic countries of the third world. If Germany has learnt from the past and is to remove the fascist stain of the past by integrating a moral factor in its foreign trades, then it can as a key economic world power take a moral initiative by calling for a new Security Council to tackle the following issues towards Islamo-fascism of the IRI:
–To ensure the end of unacceptable apathy for the crimes committed by the IRI, those UN resolutions should be issued that clearly highlight IRI’s human right violations in the last 28 years.
–The UN’s highest court, which has once cleared a number of Serbian authorities of direct responsibility for genocide in the 1990s Bosnian war, is now expected to clear many IRI’s crimes, especially the genocide of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 with the same principles that the Nuremburg Court applied to Nazi genocide criminals.
–Germany should convince the UN members to freeze all assets of IRI’s corrupt seniors and their related institutions in the world.
–Germany can bring under new scrutiny all Islamist centres, foundations, institutions, media, and economic activities in Germany having ties with the IRI or its international political Islam.
–Germany should refuse any military or economic sanctions on Iran. Blind economic sanctions or an eventual military attack on Iran serve mainly the agenda of IRI’s hardliners.
Sanctions must be politically and judicially so worked out that they only target the crimes and corruption of IRI’s officials, not people. Westren blind sanctions are not the real solutions; in fact, the regime sanctions should only target the repressive organs and judicial backgrounds of IRI’s officials.
Blind sanctions targeting a whole nation will bring people under a doubled-edged sword: One edge is the increasing poverty due to the sanctions; another sharper edge is the IRI’s increasing repression. Furthermore, whatever the characters of sanctions are, such suctions will not lead to forcibly topple the regime, as we know the case with Saddam.
On the other hand, IRI’s tactical manoeuvres, especially when the international community is not in harmony, will find ways to sneak out of the labyrinth. Finally, the international atomic conflict with Iran must not become a scapegoat for the IRI. The conflict can be abused by the IRI to drum popular support. Although Mullahs ignore values and identity of Iranian people, they demagogically project the nuclear programme as a national pride– in Mullahs’ trap, Iranian grass roots can still fall prey. What remains to be tackled with more support from the Iranian people is democracy, secularism, and the human rights record of the regime.
A conditional trade due to IRI’s nuclear ambitions can always be a shady bargaining chip in the detriment of all these above issues. The IRI knows how to manoeuvre to ultimately enrich uranium for its atomic ambitions. The moral trade, indeed, means that with its over 70 million inhabitants, Iran should not be considered as the only largest market in the region, but as the largest oppressed nation looking for freedom.
Germany should provide its commitment to support Iranians’ struggles against the IRI. This is rather a solidarity with the Iranian people than western banal concerns about IRI’s atomic ambitions for the sake of Israel.
A new round of UN sanctions on Iran is underwa and this time Germany is expected to show solidarity with the oppressed poeple of Iran instead of continuing its immoral trades with the oppressive IRI. The values of liberty, democracy, Human Rights, and support of Iranians’ struggles against the plague of the IRI must be more important in order to punish the regime, not the Iranian people.
