Zero tolerance or maximum profit?
“Germany’s Iranian secret” by Benjamin Weinthal, Haaretz.com, 12/10/2007
Germany’s role in the crisis caused by Iran’s nuclear program typifies a kind of split national personality. On the one hand, already in early 2006 Chancellor Angela Merkel, of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), drew a diplomatic line in the sand when she declared, “A president who questions Israel’s right to exist, a president who denies the Holocaust, cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany.” The fact that Ahmadinejad openly entertains the notion of exterminating Israel prompted Merkel to add, “We must take the Iranian president’s rhetoric seriously.”
But Merkel’s tough political rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to the pricey business deals German firms have closed with the Tehran regime, to the tune of $5.7 billion in 2006. That makes Germany Iran’s most important trading partner in the European Union.
A total of 5,000 German enterprises conduct business with Iran, and the list reads like a “Who’s Who” of blue-chip corporations, including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Krupp and Hermes, the debt guarantee entity for exports. The extent of the Iranian economy’s dependency on German know-how was summed up by Michael Tockuss, the former president of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran: “Some two thirds of Iranian industry relies on German engineering products.” (…)
Foreign Minister Frank Walter-Steinmeier has asserted that an Iranian nuclear bomb must be prevented, but he clearly is unwilling to match his rhetoric with concrete action. In short, Germany will not initiate unilateral sanctions against Iran.
If this is the German interpretation of “Beware of the beginnings” then “Good Night and Good Luck”!