USE THEIR PSYCHOSES AGAINST THEM:

Berlin and Vienna Stand Against the West: European Divisions on the Iranian Bomb (Matthias Küntzel, 11 Oct 2007, World Politics Review)

The policy sketched out by Sarkozy is in fact the only non-military option available. If there is any world power that is in a position to force a change in Iranian policy without the use of military force, then it is the European Union. The United States is not in a position to do so, since the United States already has no trade relations with Iran. China, Japan and Russia are not in a position to do so, because Iran can live without their trade. Only Europe is indispensable for the Mullah regime. Forty percent of all Iranian imports come from the EU. Twenty-five percent of all Iranian exports flow to the EU. Whereas for Japan and China, Iran is principally an energy supplier, the investments and imports that keep the Iranian economy itself working come principally from Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, and France. Germany was and remains Iran's number one trading partner. The former Director of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, Michael Tockuss, drew attention to Germany's importance for Iran when he noted, in an interview with the German magazine Focus, that "around two-thirds of Iranian industry is essentially equipped with plant and machinery of German manufacture. The Iranians are thoroughly dependent upon German replacement parts and suppliers."

"Thoroughly dependent": the potential efficacy of economic sanctions could hardly be made more obvious. A study undertaken in late 2006 by the Iranian parliament confirmed the obvious: without European replacement parts and products the Iranian economy would be paralyzed in a matter of months. [...]

Whereas France, Great Britain, and the United States want to use tough sanctions in order to prevent Iran's enrichment of uranium to an industrial grade, Germany, Austria, and Russia are prepared now to accept Iran's nuclear facilities as long as they are placed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They have thus effectively shelved the strategy hitherto pursued by the U.N. Security Council, which aimed at stopping Iran from acquiring the potential bomb factories, not merely at monitoring them. At the end of June, the Iranian regime gladly took up this counter-proposal, as proffered to it by IAEA Director General Mohammad El Baradei: Iran agreed to negotiations with the IAEA on the modalities of proposed controls so long as the U.N. Security Council refrained from passing any new sanctions resolution. The real aims of the agreement can be made out already in the title of the relevant IAEA document 711 (dated Aug. 27): "Understandings of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA on the Modalities of Resolution of the Outstanding Issues." The spirit of complicity animating its European champions, moreover, was well-expressed by Caspar Einem, the foreign policy spokesperson of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, when he recently observed (link in German) that "it has to be taken into account that Iranian claims that they do not intend to build an atom bomb could be meant seriously."

Tehran can be highly satisfied with the deal.

C'mon, given their guilt complex, all you'd have to do is pretend that the Germans support Iran because they don't mind the prospect of Israel being nuked and the Krauts would fold in a heartbeat.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2007 4:30 PM