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Europe’s new “Munich”: Iran

Jan 8, 2019
Mogherini visits Tehran

  • In 1938, the leaders of France and Britain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler and Mussolini. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, praised the agreement for bringing “peace in our time.” The weak and blind European governments relied on the Nazi leadership, which was already in the process of planning, not only the invasion of their neighbors, but also the Holocaust. Europe’s short-term effort today to add Tehran for profit is simply a faithful copy of its surrender in 1938.
  • “The Iranian regime spends almost a billion dollars a year on supporting terrorism alone”. – Nathan A. Sales, US Secretary of State Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, November 13, 2018.
  • Iran’s terror campaign is aimed not only at the West’s democratic allies in the Middle East, but also at Europe itself.
  • In November 2018, a few days after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called Israel a “cancerous growth in the region,” and while investigating various recent Iranian terrorist plans on European soil, Iranian representatives met with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, in Brussels to discuss nuclear cooperation/' target='_blank'>cooperation in the framework of the unsigned, illegitimate “nuclear agreement”.


MIFF-DK’s note: Maybe the EU will wake up before it’s too late? Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen has just tweeted: “Important day for European foreign policy! The EU just agreed to adopt sanctions against an Iranian intelligence service for its plans to commit assassinations on European soil. Strong signal from the EU that we will not accept such conduct in Europe. “


In the choice between greed and values, Europe is approaching an existential crossroads with Iran. Europe both undermines its own credibility and abandons its principles.

For Western governments, it is normal to defend its business interests. But to betray the Iranian people, who are oppressed by their own regime; to ignore Israel’s concern about Iran’s all too real threats of annihilation; to beg for a consent that puts Iran’s nuclear weapons capability at lightning speed, and to boycott the US government’s efforts to hold the Iranian government accountable for its actions – this is not normal. It’s deadly.

The Iranian leadership has long called for the annihilation of Israel – the country that, along with Saudi Arabia, will be most threatened by a nuclear-armed and aggressive Islamic Republic. In November, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has been hailed by the media as “moderate,” called Israel a “cancer tumor in the region.” A few months earlier, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had tweeted similar remarks:

“#Israel is a malignant cancerous growth in the West Asian region that needs to be removed and eradicated: this is possible and it will happen.”

In early November, Hamas, one of Iran’s terrorists, fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. Brian Hook, US Secretary of State, Political Adviser to the Secretary of State and Special Representative for Iran, explained:

“Iran has provided material support to the Taliban at least since 2007. The same type of missile has been used by Hamas in the past … we call on all nations, and in particular the European Union, to remove all missile approvals through the European Union, so that we can begin to manage the risk of a regional conflict through missile proliferation “.

The European Union’s (EU) attempt to bribe Iran’s leaders to comply with international standards is ineffective. Iran’s terror campaign is aimed not only at the West’s democratic allies in the Middle East, but also at Europe itself. In June, thanks to Israel, an Iranian terrorist conspiracy near Paris thwarted an event in the National Council of Resistance in Iran, an event in which hundreds of ranks from Europe, North America and elsewhere in the world participated. In the Netherlands, a political activist who demonstrated for an independent Arab state in Iran’s Ahwaz region was shot and killed in November 2017. In October 2018, Danish police arrested a Norwegian-Iranian with dual citizenship to plan the execution of Iranian dissidents living in Denmark.. In the wake of the thwarted conspiracy, the Wall Street Journal made this comment:

“Even as Iranian attacking groups spread their business across the continent, the European Union is showing a fundamental lack of seriousness about a country that is not interested in the differences between bombs, rockets and executions.”

Europe seems to have a short memory. In the 1980s and 1990s, Iranian actors were engaged in executions targeting opposition figures in France, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany. In 1997, a German court ruled that people from the upper echelons of Iran’s “political leadership” had ordered the killings of exiled Iranian system critics at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. The last prime minister of the Iranian shah, Shahpour Bakhtiar, was found stabbed to death at his home outside Paris. Hamid Abutalebi, a high-ranking diplomat who has worked as an Iranian ambassador to Australia, the EU, Belgium and Italy, was accused of overseeing the 1993 execution of Iranian system critic Mohammad Hossein Naghdi in Rome. While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of carrying out “execution operations” in Europe, Tehran had simply resumed a deadly and effective terror campaign.

The latest Iranian terrorist wave in Europe began in 2012 with a deadly bomb attack on an Israeli tour group in Bulgaria, in which five tourists were killed. Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese terrorist deputy, was involved in the bombing, and Israel accused Iran of ordering the attack. A leading US official revealed that the instructions of the terrorist cell were given to Hezbollah by Iran.

Nathan A. Sales, the US State Department’s Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, recently revealed the total amount of money that Iran spends on financing terrorism:

“This may seem hard to believe, but Iran alone provides Hezbollah with more than $ 700 million a year. It gives another $ 100 million to various Palestinian terrorist groups. When you add the money that is given to other terrorists, the total sum is close to a billion dollars … Let’s just stop and think about it, because it can withstand a repeat: the Iranian regime spends almost a billion dollars a year solely on supporting terrorism “.

How do you explain Europe’s silence and weakness in the face of this terrorist threat?

According to the UK government, EU trade with Iran in 2016 was around $ 8 billion and is expected to “quadruple in 2018”. Iran traded non-oil products worth $ 1.15 billion with the UK in the year to March 20, 2018 – 154% more than the year before. The British government also promised to expand its business relations with Iran. France’s trade with Iran saw a staggering 112% increase during January-October 2017, compared to the same period last year. In 2017, trade between Germany and Iran increased by 17%. Europe wants a bite of Iran’s economy; it begs for it.

A few days after Rouhani’s “cancer speech” about Israel, and while all these Iranian terrorist plots on European soil were already under investigation/' target='_blank'>investigation, Iranian representatives met with senior EU officials in Brussels to discuss nuclear cooperation/' target='_blank'>cooperation in the context of an unsigned, illegitimate ” nuclear deal “. Following the talks, the EU’s Head of Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, said: “They also expressed their commitment to maintaining the Nuclear Agreement, in respect of international agreements and a core pillar of European and regional security”. Iran thanked Europe for taking “practical steps” to secure the deal. Prior to the meeting with the Iranians, EU Energy Commissioner Arias Canete said the agreement was “crucial for the security of Europe, the region and the world.” Unfortunately, the opposite is also the case: adding Iran is catastrophic for security in Europe and the Middle East.

Europe’s attempts to appease Iran are based on weakness and greed.

Mutual EU trade with Iran increased from € 13.7 billion in 2016 to € 21 billion in 2017. This is probably why the EU, since September, has had plans to create a “special purpose” financial company to thwart US President Donald Trump’s new sanctions against Iran and help Tehran continue to sell oil in the EU.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that France andGermany is now leading the way in circumventing Iranian sanctions. Journalist Benjamin Weinthal recently wrote:

“Germany exported $ 3.42 billion worth of goods to Iran in 2017. Economic analysts stated shortly after the conclusion of the 2015 nuclear deal that German-Iranian trade would soon exceed $ 10 billion annually. Close to 120 German companies operate inside in the Islamic Republic, and 10,000 German companies trade with Iran. “

It should be noted that the German government not only rejected the US sanctions, but also, as a means of “promoting German trade with Iran”, provides state credit guarantees to German companies doing business with the Islamic Republic. Since 2016, the German government has provided German companies with almost one billion euros in export credit guarantees “to protect their business with Iran from the major risks of the market.” And despite US sanctions, Europe remains a crucial destination for Iran’s national transport systems. One week after the United States imposed its new sanctions on the country, including a ban on its national aviation, Iran Air flew to Paris, London and Hamburg.

Europe’s blindness to the character of the Iranian regime led the Italian parliament to open its doors to a delegation from the Institute of Political and International Studies, based in Tehran. This is the same organization that in 2006 hosted a disgusting Holocaust denial conference. “Israel has a destructive role in our region. Israel is a country that has occupied Palestine and with the war wants to maintain its existence. Israel is a forgery,” Iranian diplomat Alireza Bigdeli told the Italian parliament’s foreign affairs committee. A major European power is not only dealing illegally with Iranian oil – it is also laundering Iran’s anti – Semitic propaganda.

According to British columnist Melanie Phillips:

“Europeans’ eagerness to continue trade with Iran is abhorrent. The United States has listed Iran as one of the world’s largest sponsors of terrorism. The regime has been intoxication/' target='_blank'>in a state of self-declared war against the West since coming to power in 1979. It regularly denies the Holocaust and reiterates its intentions to wipe Israel off the map … So it should simply be against the conscience to trade with Iran. Yet Europeans are bowing in the dust to continue to do so. “

Former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel recently traveled to Tehran with a German finance delegation. According to the newspaper Bild , Gabriel met parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani (who has called the existence of the Holocaust an “open question”) and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who handles Iran’s support for various terrorist groups in the Middle East. The new German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, recently said there was “strong agreement” with Iran to minimize the effects of US sanctions.

It thus appears that Europe has chosen Iran over its own values ​​and the transatlantic alliance. Josef Schuster, chairman of the Central Council of German Jews, condemned Germany’s hypocrisy:

“It seems paradoxical that Germany – as a country that is said to have learned from its horrific past and that has committed itself intensely to the fight against anti-Semitismis one of the strongest economic partners of a regime that unequivocally denies Holocaust and human rights violations on a daily basis “.

A Europe where, according to a new CNN poll, anti-Semitism is once again spreading violently sees no problem in flattering and adding a country like Iran that regularly calls for the extermination of Israeli Jews and denies the Holocaust.

The EU’s greed sometimes gets embarrassing, as when EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, wearing a hijab, posed for selfies in Iran’s parliament. Or when Sweden’s Minister of Trade, Ann Linde, headed a delegation from her own country to Iran, and all the women in the delegation wore headscarves. When the Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate against their own regime, Mogherini, according to Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, was “silent about the popular uprising in Iran.”

“She waited for six days before saying anything about the demonstrations there. When she finally did, it was with a mixture of flattery and neutrality. ‘In keeping with the open and respectful spirit that lies at the root of our circumstances, ‘she said,’ we expect all concerned to abstainviolence and ensure freedom of expression ‘”.

It was an exquisite example of moral myopia.

In 1938, the leaders of France and Britain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler and Mussolini. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, praised the agreement for bringing “peace in our time.” The weak and blind European governments relied on the Nazi leadership, which was already planning, not just the invasion of their neighbors, but also the Holocaust. Instead of leading to peace, Europe’s obedience led to world war and Hitler’s takeover of most of Europe. In 2018, Europe’s leaders once again gambled on the security of their own citizens as well as their allies in the Middle East, particularly Israel. Europe’s short – term effort today to add Tehran for profit is simply a faithful copy of its 1938 surrender.

Sources and Notes

Giulio Meotti, cultural editor at Il Foglio , Italian journalist and author ..

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute on January 3, 2019. Europe’s New “Munich”: Iran . Translated into Danish by Mette Thomsen and published on January 6, 2019. Reprinted with permission from Gatestone Institute .

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  • Are Western “benefactors” at all interested in helping Syrians and Palestinians ?, 2018-03-18


  • Europe: Judeo-Christian symbols disappear as Islam spreads, 2018-02-27


  • France: Muslims in, Jews out, 2017-12-08


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