Launching an Iranian embargo in Germany

Ha'aretz - Tel Aviv,Israel

BERLIN - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will arrive here on Sunday for a two-day visit that will serve as either a defining moment in Israeli-German relations or as an empty round of diplomatic gestures.

As the first meeting between Olmert and Chancellor Angela Merkel since the release of the American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program two months ago, the visit is likely to be overshadowed by that subject. The NIE asserts that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, whereas Israeli intelligence suggests that Iran persists in its drive to develop a nuclear bomb.

Although Merkel and Olmert's agenda also includes instability, in Gaza in particular and the Middle East in general, the principal area in which Germany can flex its foreign-policy muscles is its political and economic relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Indeed, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently negotiated a third round of sanctions against Iran among the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Critics assert, however, that Security Council sanctions are symbolic measures. In fact, according to a report in the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the Russians and Chinese only agreed to the sanctions as a "small favor" to help Steinmeier's Social Democratic Party in regional elections that were about to take place in Hesse and Lower Saxony.
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The new UN penalties, which may not even be approved by the full Security Council, will in any event not impede the flourishing trade relationship between Germany and Iran. Germany was the European Union's biggest exporter to Iran in 2007 (3.5 billion euros of goods), selling it nearly 1.5 billion euros' worth of engineering products and high-tech equipment, two categories that fall into the gray zone of dual-use technology. This is "Made in Germany" merchandise that can be applied either to nonmilitary use or the creation of a nuclear weapons arsenal. (In late January, the German engineering giant Siemens, which is active in Iran's dual-use energy and medical sectors, acknowledged that it had spent 19 million euros bribing Iranian officials to do business with it. The exact nature of the quid pro quo of the German-Iranian bribery scandal still remains a mystery.)

Although German exports to Iran shrank by 15 percent last year, there is a new twist, involving a dramatic 50-percent increase of business going in the opposite direction, with Iranian exports to Germany totaling 580 million euros - trade that entails more than just Iranian pistachio nuts. The German business daily Handelsblatt wrote in January that there is a "growing resistance among the German business class against sanctions."

Merkel, writing in the same paper on December 27, suggested that Iran still remains a dangerous threat to world security. Yet one of the more startling recent revelations of her tough anti-Iranian rhetoric concerned not German firms, but neighboring Austria: In a meeting in New York last September, the chancellor sharply criticized the 22-billion-euro oil deal between the partially state-owned Austrian oil and energy company OMV, and Iran. The announcement this week that German gas company RWE will become a partner in the Nabucco natural gas pipeline plan controlled by OMV suggests, however, that the possibility of influencing Iran is being significantly undercut in favor of Iranian gas that will flow to Europe through the pipeline.

The yawning gap between Merkel's political posture and the unpleasant reality on the ground back in Germany remains astonishing to the detached observer. Prime Minister Olmert seems to have not even registered her recent rebuff of his request to deny the mid-December release of two Iranian contract killers, who assassinated four Iranian political dissidents in Berlin in 1992. Olmert sought to have Germany condition the release of one of the convicted murders on Iran's supplying information on the fate of missing Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad, who was captured in Lebanon in 1986 and who is believed to have been transferred at some point to Iran.

Olmert and Israeli diplomats here in Germany invoke a standard foreign-policy formula regarding Germany's approach to Iran: They offer cordial recognition - frequently even praise - of German progress in arranging for watered-down sanctions, together with a plea for upping the level of economic and political pressure on Iran. Time is not Israel's ally regarding Iran's determination to enrich uranium , which is not needed for production of civilian nuclear energy, but is a precondition for an atomic weapon. Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium-enrichment program is the basis for UN and European Union sanctions.

The mullahs' oft-repeated threats to eliminate Israel are frequently downplayed in sectors of German society as the empty ravings of pathologically religious zealots. This marginalizing of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's language represents a bizarre understanding of history in a nation in which not so long ago, a fundamentally mad dictator implemented his rhetoric to wage war against Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents, and Roma and Sinti.

When Olmert touches down at Tegel Airport in two days, he will be confronted with two choices: Israel can behave like a kind of orphan begging for a second helping of watered-down porridge, or it can embrace a public diplomatic offensive intended to convince Germany to take an assertive lead on clamping down on economic relations with Iran. German politicians like Ruprecht Polenz, the Iran-friendly head of the Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee (and Merkel's party colleague), will argue that China and Russia will fill any gap created by Germany's withdrawal from trade with Iran. Polenz's bogus argument ignores the fact that the Chinese and Russians cannot supply Iran with the sophisticated Western-design technology necessary for Iran's growing infrastructure.

A comprehensive economic embargo campaign against Iran has to begin somewhere in Europe, and Germany is the logical departure point. Its leverage in Tehran can contribute to preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, ending that country's material support of the terror activities of Hezbollah and Hamas, and stabilizing Middle East relations. In March, the German cabinet, including Chancellor Merkel, will travel to Israel for a ceremonial meeting in celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary. What better way to reinforce the existence of Israel for 60 years than to sever economic and political ties with Iran, a country yearning for the destruction of Israeli democracy.

Benjamin Weinthal is an independent journalist working in Berlin.