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Germany's Iranian secret

By Benjamin Weinthal

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."

The government's tolerant attitude toward the private-public sector business relationship with Iran was best captured in a late September conference - an initiative of Germany's Economics Ministry - intended to promote expanded trade with Iran. During a follow-up to this conference in early October, the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (IHK) advised companies about "market entry and opportunities of expansion" in Iran. But this splendid business partnership may very well be Germany's best-kept secret. According to the German business paper Handelsblatt, "German companies are trying ... not to publicize their contracts with Tehran." For that reason, the power of Iran in Germany is the scandal that dares not speak its name.

How does one explain the disconnect between Merkel's tough political rhetoric and her government's inability to clamp down on the mushrooming business deals, many of which involve the sale of dual-use technology (that is, for both civilian and military purposes)?

Petra Hitzler, who oversees trade relations with Iran in the Economics Ministry, said she cannot comment on dual-use technology because "it is not possible to inspect the business transactions of private companies." A spokesperson from the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control - the agency charged with scrutinizing business with Iran - told me that privacy laws prevent her from publicly naming German firms that have received special permission to supply material for civilian-use nuclear reactors in Iran. More disturbingly, she added, "we cannot control how the material is utilized in Iran."

The revelation in early July that the public prosecutor in the city of Potsdam expanded its ongoing investigation of a group of German companies - whose contracts with Iran total between $100 million and $150 million - because of their allegedly unlawful supply of materials has raised troubling questions about Germany's official policy of being committed to preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb.

The initial investigation involved some 50 companies, but has meanwhile been narrowed down to three or four firms, accused of smuggling technology to Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant. In 1974, Siemens played a vital role in building Bushehr's reactor, which was destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war. Matthias Kuentzel, a German political scientist and a leading observer of the field of German-Iranian relations, wrote: "In August 2003, Siemens signed a contract for the delivery of 24 power stations. To make this deal, Siemens had to commit itself to 'technology transfer with regard to small and medium-sized power stations.'"

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.

Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, a Middle East expert who heads the Wadi organization, based in Iraq, argues that "the Foreign Ministry is blocking Merkel, who is alone in her human rights policy." Even Merkel's party colleague Ruprecht Polenz, the CDU chairman of the German parliament's foreign relations committee, calls this an "international crisis, whose key does not lie with Germany." When I asked him if Germany could take a cutting-edge role in imposing an economic embargo against Iran, Polenz replied that such an approach is not "sound."

The director of the Middle East section of the German Institute of Global Area Studies, Dr. Udo Steinbach, offered reasons for such an attitude in a interview he gave to the Eurasisches Magazin in April: "Europe should in no way feel threatened," if Iran secures nuclear weapons; rather, he said, "Iran is a threat to a secular Turkey and, of course, Israel." Steinbach's Middle East department receives a lot of funding from the German Foreign Ministry. The British-American journalist Christopher Hitchens has written, in a different context, that "only a moral cretin thinks that anti-Semitism is a threat only to Jews." Similarly, you'd have to be an imbecile to think a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat only to a secular Turkey and Israel. Is Germany smart enough to move beyond short-term profit maximization, to work for long-term peace in the Middle East and Europe?

Benjamin Weinthal is a journalist working in Berlin.

Germany\'s Iranian secret - Haaretz - Israel News