WOOING IRAN IS ENCOURAGING HARD-LINERS, NOT REFORMISTS
By Parviz Mardani
BONN 16th Feb. (IPS) The sudden warming of relations between Iran and the European Union (EU) is puzzling both Iranian and European analysts who wonders about the logics behind this rather strange "honey moon" that, surprisingly, comes after the harsh verdicts handed down by an Iranian Islamic revolution court against a dozen of prominent Iranian personalities who had participated in a conference organised in Berlin last April by the pro-Green Party Heinrich Boel Institute had "dismayed" the EU and most particularly Germany.
The Iranian authorities had ruled that the German Greens, the junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s coalition government was a "Zionist" movement and the aim of the Berlin meeting, influenced by the United States and Israel, was to topple the Iranian clerical system.
Based on this assumption, the court had accused the participants of various charges, including propaganda against the State, endangering the State’s security, offending the regime’s clerical leaders and talking against Islam.
Reacting angrily to the sentences, German’s Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer summoned the Iranian ambassador Ahmad Azizi for "urgent consultations" while officials at the Institute demanded that Berlin take "though" measure against Tehran and tell the Iranian authorities that for Germans, trade was not always "uber Alles".
But now, the just finished visit to Germany of a large Iranian trade delegation that will be reciprocated by Berlin on Sunday 18th February when a group of some 150 German businessmen representing all sectors of the nation’s industries, banking and finances would travel to Tehran with Mr. Wolfgang Thierse, the Speaker of the Bundestag (Germany’s parliament), has somehow surprised more than one analyst.
What astonished more the experts is that the visit of the Iranian team was unannounced, unpublicised, almost kept secret from the public, even the press that had cold shouldered the visit of the Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi who, during his two days stay in Berlin from 8 to 10 of February aimded at both explain the verdicts and to remove Germans apprehensions, was also rebuked from the Chancellor, telling him that he would go to Teheran on the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami "only when he felt the time is right".
Led by the Export Promotion Centre of Iran (EPCI), the delegation travelled to different German landers and visited Hamburg, Stuttgart, Leipzig and Dusseldorf to discuss Tehran-Berlin economic cooperation and brief the Germans on the status of the Iranian economy and the country's export initiatives on Iran-Germany trade opportunities.
Iran’s main trade partner and political supporter in the West after the Islamic revolution of 1979, Germany lost ground to other rivals in the EU, particularly an aggressive Italy after Iranian agents killed four Iranian dissidents in Berlin in September 1992 and a High Court in Berlin concluded that the murders were directly ordered by the highest Iranian authorities, including the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i.
EPCI’s President and Deputy Commerce Minister, Mojtaba Khosrowtaj, who led the Iranian delegation pointed to existing potentials for further expansion of Iran-Germany co-operation and asked for Iranian proposals to be looked into, including "export" to Germany of what he described as skilled Iranian manpower in the industrial and technical fields, particularly in the computer software industry.
"In the one hand, Mr. Schroeder’s remarks (that he would go to Tehran when time is right) is interpreted as meaning Germany would improve relations after the Islamic Republic somewhat honours human rights considerations, but on the other, the exchange of such high-level trade and political delegations shows that Berlin is prepared to recapture it’s former positions as Tehran’s main trade partner and political patron", observed an Iranian analyst.
But Germany, where the powerful industry community plays an important role in the formulation of the country’s foreign policy is not alone in wooing the Iranians who, thanks to higher oil prices, have some money to spent.
Isma’il Cem, Turkish Foreign Minister was in Tehran last week, accompanied by 25 leading businessmen, opening "a new chapter" in the two neighbours troubled relations.
His Austrian counterpart, Mrs. Benita Ferroro-Waldner, followed him immediately, as an Iranian commerce team was visiting Vienna, discussing ways of promoting trade, industry and technical co-operations.
The German trade mission to Tehran would be followed by an even larger delegation from Italy; Tehran’s present leading trade partner, as well as the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet.
In a statement released last week, EU recommended its 15 members to "warm up" to Tehran, regardless of the controversial sentences pronounced against the unfortunate Iranian guests of Heinrich Boel and in oblivion of the "bundle closure" of more than 30 publications, most of them supporting reform process and the imprisonment of leading journalists and political dissidents.
The astounding recommendation came at a time that the clergy-dominated Iranian authorities expect the new US Republican Administration remove sanctions Washington had imposed on Iran following the rupture of relations between the two sides after 55 American diplomats were taken hostage in November1979, measures that not only proved ineffective, but harmed mostly American oil firms.
"Europeans argue that continuation of friendly ties with Tehran helps the reformist camp that is led by the President. But the political situation in Iran shows clearly that they are wrong, as not only the reformists are in retreat, not only the President had himself confessed to his impotency facing the conservatives, but the hard-liners have largely benefited from the Europeans good-will", the Iranian source noted. ENDS IRAN GERMANY EU 16201