Germany's Unilateral Sanction against Itself and the Unspoken Moral of the Story
Shirin Shafaie | 27.02.2010 21:04 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Anti-racism | World
Why is Germany ashamed of its past vis-à-vis the Jewish people but not the Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish people? How is it morally consistent for Germany to cry for responsibility, transparency, and honesty regarding production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world while failing to apply these same principles to itself?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently claimed at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Germany has always called for transparency and cooperation with Iran, but unfortunately Iran has not responded. Merkel also made it clear that her government will pursue unilateral economic sanctions in case China blocks an otherwise unanimous Security Council plan for more sanctions against Iran.1
However, Jens Nagel, Managing Director of the Federation of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade (BGA), believes unilateral German sanctions against Iran to be totally incomprehensible because they will open Germany's lucrative slice of the Iranian market to Asian and European competitors. According to BGA President Anton F. Boerner, Germany could be the biggest loser of a unilateral sanction policy against Iran because it could lead to the loss of 10,000 German jobs, in mostly medium-sized German companies, many of them family-owned businesses which depend heavily on trade with Iran. 2 In other words, in a bizarre twist of political economy, Germany effectively will be unilaterally sanctioning itself.
So why bother? Something greater than pure political economy is at stake here, namely morality, or so one may be led to believe. However, discussing morality is a prerogative reserved exclusively for the Western powers -- take for example President Carter's human rights rhetoric, President Bush's "Axis of Evil," and Vice President Biden's recent conclusion that the Iranian leaders have "lost their moral credibility,"3 as well as Chancellor Merkel's recent statement that Germany's special relationship with Israel derives from Germany's "shame" for the Holocaust. 4 How morally perverse, then, that Germany now seems to proclaim itself responsible for containing Iran's allegedly "irresponsible" nuclear program on account of Germany's special relationship with Israel due to the Holocaust and yet has expressed no similar moral obligation to the Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish people who suffered from Germany's historical support of chemical weapons stretching back to the Iran-Iraq War and even to Auschwitz.
Germany was among the staunchest Western supporters of Saddam Hussein and his Act of Aggression against Iran in the 1980s. The fact that German companies knowingly5 provided Saddam Hussein with essential components and technology to manufacture chemical weapons in Iraq's Samarra and Al-Fallujah complexes is no secret.6 In fact, the relevant documentation of this has been widely circulated in the West (especially by the US and the UK), particularly while (1) reviewing and assessing the protective equipment of Coalition armies during the Second Gulf War of 1990-19917 and (2) justifying the 2003 preemptive attack on Iraq. The human cost associated with these chemical recipes has been high: 5,000 were killed instantly in Halabja in 1988 and more than 10,000 have died since then from disease and related complications. In moral terms, Germany's role in this tragedy becomes even more complicated when one remembers that technology used by Saddam Hussein in Halabja and elsewhere during the Iran-Iraq War is in fact the progression and continuation of the same technology that had been used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. This begs the question: why is Germany ashamed of its past vis-à-vis the Jewish people but not the Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish people? How is it morally consistent for Germany to cry for responsibility, transparency, and honesty regarding production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world while failing to apply these same principles to itself?
The answer to this question may lie in Chancellor Merkel's moral relativism. Merkel wants to ensure that Germany "alters what is no longer beneficial for it and preserves what has taken it forward in the past decades."8 In Iran, this attitude is called "naan be nerkh-e rooz khordan," literally "to eat bread based on the daily rate," which is to say, being an opportunist. In more concrete terms, Merkel seems to think it is okay for Germany to ship chemical agents and technology to Iraq yesterday and then to impose economic sanctions against Iran today. (However, Merkel does not seem to understand how to play the game in the interest of Germany itself: while German companies benefitted from the Samara and Al-Fallujah chemical deals yesterday, if she succumbs even further to the Israeli pressures and presses forward with unilateral sanctions against Iran now, German companies will suffer from the sanctions against Iran, rendering some 10,000 German employees arbeitslos.)
Germany's example is indicative of the broader Western attitude towards Iran. It seems to me that our world today is subjected to the same totalitarian supreme leadership, i.e. 5+1, that it pretends to criticize in Iran. Where was the UN "Security" Council when Germany was shipping potential chemical weapons to Iraq? In fact the US intelligence services merely informed Germany in the autumn of 1990 about the danger entailed in providing Saddam Hussein with poisonous gases. The UN Security Council neither condemned nor punished Germany for that. The German generosity towards Saddam Hussein in this case was so great that, by 1989, Iraq had become the biggest Middle Eastern producer of gases that could be used in warfare, receiving a considerable number of persistent requests from Third World countries that wanted to purchase Iraqi chemical weapons.
The Iranian people are still waiting for the West, especially for Germany, to acknowledge its role in assisting Saddam Hussein's Act of Aggression against their country. What they find instead is a stubborn effort to destroy Iran's economy, undermine the sovereignty of its political regime, and damage its people: eight years through Saddam Hussein and now through unilateral sanctions or through the UN Security Council. We should ask ourselves: if Germany, France, the US, the UK, and Russia have to make sure that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful (read terminated), who is then to watch Germany, France, the US, the UK, and Russia and make sure that they do not embark upon yet another destruction of Iranian economic and human resources?
Take the above into account when you hear feigned Western suspicions about Iranian intentions regarding the transfer of 70 percent of the Iranian low-enriched uranium abroad, to be exchanged for fuel from France. If anything, it is the Iranian people who ought to find such an exchange very suspicious -- and they do. The Iranian people will continue to require transparency from the international party through their parliament (Majles) and will not easily sanction Ahmadinejad to go ahead with the transfer of the Iranian uranium abroad. After all, the Iranian nuclear program is a nationalized project. The whole nation, and not just the president, has to agree with the deal. There may not be an American-defined or European-defined or even Israeli-defined democracy in Iran, but there is democracy of another kind in the country nevertheless. A substantial population of Iran believe to have their representatives in the Majles; another substantial part of the population are engaged in a complex but ongoing political competition with the former. There is a massive level of public participation, despite a considerable degree of force monopolized by the state. In other words, every socio-political faction of today's Iran is actively practicing its full capacities. This is not a new thing. The Iranians have become fully mobilized many times during their contemporary history and beyond (the Tobacco Movement of 1891, the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, the 1951 Nationalization of Oil, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Reform Movement of 1997-2005, and now the national nuclear agenda in addition to the "Green Movement"). What is new is only the "outside" world noticing their existence thanks to mass information-sharing tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the emerging "citizen journalism."
The international community and its citizens should hasten to catch up with the indigenous energy coming from Iran. They have to learn quickly to realize its mechanism and its potentials. The West has to get over the fact that Iran is an independent country against all odds. It should recognize the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic both as a regime and as a state and try to engage with it as an equal party. That means that the West must give up its desire and proactive policies for regime change in Iran through economic and political sanctions or by more aggressive military means. If there is going to be any change in Iran, it is bound to come from within -- without any outside interference whatsoever.
Germany can continue sanctioning itself through Iran, the US can pretend to be concerned about the security of the world and democracy in Iran, France can share a desire to destroy Iran's economy and independence, the UK is free to try to sabotage another nationalized Iranian project, and they all can enjoy a ride on the Israeli bandwagon. At the end of the day, however, they all have to be wary of what they are going to lose along the way, just economic interests at best, and moral values at worst.
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Notes:
1 See Judy Dempsey, "Germany Supports Tougher Iran Sanctions," New York Times, 18 January 2010; also "Merkel Backs Iran Sanctions at German-Israeli Cabinet Session," Deutsche Welle, 18 January 2010.
2 "Merkels Sanktionspolitik wird teuer für die deutsche Wirtschaft," Handelsblatt.com, 28 January 2010; or "German Cabinet Divided over Merkel's Iran Sanction Plans," Islamic Republic News Agency, 28 January 2010; and "Handelsblatt: German Cabinet Divided over Iran Sanction Plans," ArabicNews.com, 29 January 2010.
3 See Adam Arnold, "'Iran Crackdown Is Destroying The Country'," Sky News Online, 2 February 2010.
4 See Isabel Kershner, "Merkel Says Holocaust Fills Germans 'With Shame'," New York Times, 19 March 2008.
5 See Frederick Kempe, "How German Firms Built Up Iraq's Arsenal," Seattle Times (reprinted from Wall Street Journal), 4 October 1990.
6 See Marc Erikson, "Germany's Leading Role in Arming Iraq," Asia Times, 5 February 2003. For a comprehensive, documented, and academic account of this, see among others, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "The Whole Range of Saddam Hussein's War Crimes," Middle East Report(239), 2006, pp. 30-35; ibid, The International Politics of the Persian Gulf, London, New York: Routledge, 2006; Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq and the Gassing of Halabja, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; and Bi'kār'gīrī-i silaḥ-i shīmīyā'ī tatavassuṭ-i rizhīm-i Irāq (Use of Chemical Warfare by Iraqi Regime), Tehran: War Information Headquarters, Supreme Defence Council, 1985.
7 See Baker Spring, "America's Options If Iraq Uses Chemical Weapons," The Heritage Foundation, 24 August 1990.
8 See Angela Merkel's Official Website: .
Shirin Shafaie is an Iranian researcher and PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She was educated in Iran (BA in Philosophy and MA in Philosophy of Art) and in the UK (MSc in Middle East Politics). The core of her research is critical war studies in general and the Iran-Iraq War in particular.
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However, Jens Nagel, Managing Director of the Federation of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade (BGA), believes unilateral German sanctions against Iran to be totally incomprehensible because they will open Germany's lucrative slice of the Iranian market to Asian and European competitors. According to BGA President Anton F. Boerner, Germany could be the biggest loser of a unilateral sanction policy against Iran because it could lead to the loss of 10,000 German jobs, in mostly medium-sized German companies, many of them family-owned businesses which depend heavily on trade with Iran. 2 In other words, in a bizarre twist of political economy, Germany effectively will be unilaterally sanctioning itself.
So why bother? Something greater than pure political economy is at stake here, namely morality, or so one may be led to believe. However, discussing morality is a prerogative reserved exclusively for the Western powers -- take for example President Carter's human rights rhetoric, President Bush's "Axis of Evil," and Vice President Biden's recent conclusion that the Iranian leaders have "lost their moral credibility,"3 as well as Chancellor Merkel's recent statement that Germany's special relationship with Israel derives from Germany's "shame" for the Holocaust. 4 How morally perverse, then, that Germany now seems to proclaim itself responsible for containing Iran's allegedly "irresponsible" nuclear program on account of Germany's special relationship with Israel due to the Holocaust and yet has expressed no similar moral obligation to the Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish people who suffered from Germany's historical support of chemical weapons stretching back to the Iran-Iraq War and even to Auschwitz.
Germany was among the staunchest Western supporters of Saddam Hussein and his Act of Aggression against Iran in the 1980s. The fact that German companies knowingly5 provided Saddam Hussein with essential components and technology to manufacture chemical weapons in Iraq's Samarra and Al-Fallujah complexes is no secret.6 In fact, the relevant documentation of this has been widely circulated in the West (especially by the US and the UK), particularly while (1) reviewing and assessing the protective equipment of Coalition armies during the Second Gulf War of 1990-19917 and (2) justifying the 2003 preemptive attack on Iraq. The human cost associated with these chemical recipes has been high: 5,000 were killed instantly in Halabja in 1988 and more than 10,000 have died since then from disease and related complications. In moral terms, Germany's role in this tragedy becomes even more complicated when one remembers that technology used by Saddam Hussein in Halabja and elsewhere during the Iran-Iraq War is in fact the progression and continuation of the same technology that had been used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. This begs the question: why is Germany ashamed of its past vis-à-vis the Jewish people but not the Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish people? How is it morally consistent for Germany to cry for responsibility, transparency, and honesty regarding production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world while failing to apply these same principles to itself?
The answer to this question may lie in Chancellor Merkel's moral relativism. Merkel wants to ensure that Germany "alters what is no longer beneficial for it and preserves what has taken it forward in the past decades."8 In Iran, this attitude is called "naan be nerkh-e rooz khordan," literally "to eat bread based on the daily rate," which is to say, being an opportunist. In more concrete terms, Merkel seems to think it is okay for Germany to ship chemical agents and technology to Iraq yesterday and then to impose economic sanctions against Iran today. (However, Merkel does not seem to understand how to play the game in the interest of Germany itself: while German companies benefitted from the Samara and Al-Fallujah chemical deals yesterday, if she succumbs even further to the Israeli pressures and presses forward with unilateral sanctions against Iran now, German companies will suffer from the sanctions against Iran, rendering some 10,000 German employees arbeitslos.)
Germany's example is indicative of the broader Western attitude towards Iran. It seems to me that our world today is subjected to the same totalitarian supreme leadership, i.e. 5+1, that it pretends to criticize in Iran. Where was the UN "Security" Council when Germany was shipping potential chemical weapons to Iraq? In fact the US intelligence services merely informed Germany in the autumn of 1990 about the danger entailed in providing Saddam Hussein with poisonous gases. The UN Security Council neither condemned nor punished Germany for that. The German generosity towards Saddam Hussein in this case was so great that, by 1989, Iraq had become the biggest Middle Eastern producer of gases that could be used in warfare, receiving a considerable number of persistent requests from Third World countries that wanted to purchase Iraqi chemical weapons.
The Iranian people are still waiting for the West, especially for Germany, to acknowledge its role in assisting Saddam Hussein's Act of Aggression against their country. What they find instead is a stubborn effort to destroy Iran's economy, undermine the sovereignty of its political regime, and damage its people: eight years through Saddam Hussein and now through unilateral sanctions or through the UN Security Council. We should ask ourselves: if Germany, France, the US, the UK, and Russia have to make sure that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful (read terminated), who is then to watch Germany, France, the US, the UK, and Russia and make sure that they do not embark upon yet another destruction of Iranian economic and human resources?
Take the above into account when you hear feigned Western suspicions about Iranian intentions regarding the transfer of 70 percent of the Iranian low-enriched uranium abroad, to be exchanged for fuel from France. If anything, it is the Iranian people who ought to find such an exchange very suspicious -- and they do. The Iranian people will continue to require transparency from the international party through their parliament (Majles) and will not easily sanction Ahmadinejad to go ahead with the transfer of the Iranian uranium abroad. After all, the Iranian nuclear program is a nationalized project. The whole nation, and not just the president, has to agree with the deal. There may not be an American-defined or European-defined or even Israeli-defined democracy in Iran, but there is democracy of another kind in the country nevertheless. A substantial population of Iran believe to have their representatives in the Majles; another substantial part of the population are engaged in a complex but ongoing political competition with the former. There is a massive level of public participation, despite a considerable degree of force monopolized by the state. In other words, every socio-political faction of today's Iran is actively practicing its full capacities. This is not a new thing. The Iranians have become fully mobilized many times during their contemporary history and beyond (the Tobacco Movement of 1891, the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, the 1951 Nationalization of Oil, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Reform Movement of 1997-2005, and now the national nuclear agenda in addition to the "Green Movement"). What is new is only the "outside" world noticing their existence thanks to mass information-sharing tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the emerging "citizen journalism."
The international community and its citizens should hasten to catch up with the indigenous energy coming from Iran. They have to learn quickly to realize its mechanism and its potentials. The West has to get over the fact that Iran is an independent country against all odds. It should recognize the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic both as a regime and as a state and try to engage with it as an equal party. That means that the West must give up its desire and proactive policies for regime change in Iran through economic and political sanctions or by more aggressive military means. If there is going to be any change in Iran, it is bound to come from within -- without any outside interference whatsoever.
Germany can continue sanctioning itself through Iran, the US can pretend to be concerned about the security of the world and democracy in Iran, France can share a desire to destroy Iran's economy and independence, the UK is free to try to sabotage another nationalized Iranian project, and they all can enjoy a ride on the Israeli bandwagon. At the end of the day, however, they all have to be wary of what they are going to lose along the way, just economic interests at best, and moral values at worst.
__________________
Notes:
1 See Judy Dempsey, "Germany Supports Tougher Iran Sanctions," New York Times, 18 January 2010; also "Merkel Backs Iran Sanctions at German-Israeli Cabinet Session," Deutsche Welle, 18 January 2010.
2 "Merkels Sanktionspolitik wird teuer für die deutsche Wirtschaft," Handelsblatt.com, 28 January 2010; or "German Cabinet Divided over Merkel's Iran Sanction Plans," Islamic Republic News Agency, 28 January 2010; and "Handelsblatt: German Cabinet Divided over Iran Sanction Plans," ArabicNews.com, 29 January 2010.
3 See Adam Arnold, "'Iran Crackdown Is Destroying The Country'," Sky News Online, 2 February 2010.
4 See Isabel Kershner, "Merkel Says Holocaust Fills Germans 'With Shame'," New York Times, 19 March 2008.
5 See Frederick Kempe, "How German Firms Built Up Iraq's Arsenal," Seattle Times (reprinted from Wall Street Journal), 4 October 1990.
6 See Marc Erikson, "Germany's Leading Role in Arming Iraq," Asia Times, 5 February 2003. For a comprehensive, documented, and academic account of this, see among others, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "The Whole Range of Saddam Hussein's War Crimes," Middle East Report(239), 2006, pp. 30-35; ibid, The International Politics of the Persian Gulf, London, New York: Routledge, 2006; Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq and the Gassing of Halabja, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; and Bi'kār'gīrī-i silaḥ-i shīmīyā'ī tatavassuṭ-i rizhīm-i Irāq (Use of Chemical Warfare by Iraqi Regime), Tehran: War Information Headquarters, Supreme Defence Council, 1985.
7 See Baker Spring, "America's Options If Iraq Uses Chemical Weapons," The Heritage Foundation, 24 August 1990.
8 See Angela Merkel's Official Website: .
Shirin Shafaie is an Iranian researcher and PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She was educated in Iran (BA in Philosophy and MA in Philosophy of Art) and in the UK (MSc in Middle East Politics). The core of her research is critical war studies in general and the Iran-Iraq War in particular.
_____________________
Shirin Shafaie
Homepage:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/shafaie070210.html
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US army chief: We're obliged to make sure that the Holocaust never happens again
27.02.2010 21:08
US army chief Mullen and Israeli army chief Ashkenazi visit the Holocaust museum
US army chief: We are obligated to make sure that the Holocaust will never happen again
[propaganda alert]
Editorial note: In the name of preventing another Holocaust, the war-criminal-in-chief threatens war against a country that has never waged any war of aggression.
_______________
[US army chief Michael Mullen, speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem, 15 February 2010] [1]
“We would operate all our forces for Israel. […] The option to attack Iran is still on the table, but we’re not there yet.”
[US army chief Michael Mullen, joint press conference with the Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi, Tel Aviv, 14 February 2010] [2]
___________________
from the archives:
“Our soul screams out: ‘This [i.e. the Holocaust] can’t be correct, this must not be real.’ But then, defeated, it screams out ‘Never Again.’ ”
[Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, comments in the visitors’ book, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem, 1 February 2010] [3]
“Never again ignore blood-thirsty dictators, hiding behind demagogical masks, who utter murderous slogans. The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass-destruction [...]”
[Israeli President Shimon Peres, speech on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Germany’s Parliament Bundestag, Berlin, 27 January 2010] [4]
“We cannot allow this to be repeated. We, means the whole civilized world. We cannot allow those who wish to perpetrate mass death, those who call for the destruction of the Jewish people or the Jewish state, to go unchallenged. […] [T]he most important thing to do is to nip it at the bud.”
[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speech at the Axel Springer publishing house, Berlin, 27 August 2009] [5]
“The Holocaust is […] an eternal responsibility of our country, and part of a basic tenet of our policy […] is to defend Israel always, […] and that is why we feel so responsible now also as regards Iran.”
[Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel, joint press conference with the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Berlin, 27 August 2009] [6]
“There are clocks ticking all around. One of those clocks is the uranium enrichment clock, which will show that by a certain date the Iranians will have sufficient, highly enriched uranium materials to create a bomb that could literally wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds.”
[Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren, Aspen Ideas Festival, Colorado, 3 July 2009] [7]
“When you see the gas chambers, the concentration camps, […] it makes you absolutely determined that we should not ever allow this to happen again.”
[UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, interview at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, 28 April 2009] [8]
“How do we ensure that ‘never again’ isn’t an empty slogan, or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?”
[US President Barack Obama, Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, United States Capitol, Washington D.C., 23 April 2009] [9]
“France will always stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel when her security and existence are threatened. […] And those who call scandalously for Israel’s destruction will always find France in their way, blocking the path.”
[France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy, speech at the Israeli Parliament Knesset, Jerusalem, 23 June 2008] [10]
________________
notes:
[1] Admiral Mullen Visits Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
Israel Defense Forces website, 15 February 2010
[2] U.S Army Chief: “Iran attack option on the table”
Israel Defense Forces website, 14 February 2010
[3] Visit of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) website, 1 February 2010
[4] Address by President Peres at the German Bundestag
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 27 January 2010
[5] PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at Axel Springer, Berlin, Germany
(Israeli) Prime Minister’s Office website, 27 August 2009
[6] Joint Press Conference of PM Netanyahu and Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel in Berlin
(Israeli) Prime Minister’s Office website, 27 August 2009
[7] Israel US ambassador warns of Iranian bomb
by Yitzak Benhorin, Ynetnews, 3 July 2009
[8] PM’s words at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
Number 10 (UK Prime Minister’s Office) website, 29 April 2009
[9] Remarks by the President at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance Ceremony
The White House website, 23 April 2009
[10] Speech by M. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic, to the Knesset
Embassy of France in Washington website, 23 June 2008
_______________________
dandelion salad
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