BERLIN – The Swiss government’s policy to reject sanctions targeting Iran’s
Central Bank and European oil trade has prompted criticism from the US
government.
With a new round of EU and US Iran sanctions to be
implemented on July 1, there is growing frustration from the American side that
the Swiss have failed to join the Western coalition trying to stymie Iran’s
nuclear work.
“We expressed our disappointment. We would like them
to do it [follow the EU on Iran sanctions],” US Ambassador Donald Beyer told a
news conference in Geneva in earlier this month.
In an email to
The
Jerusalem Post on Saturday, Josh Block, a senior fellow at the Washington- based
Progressive Policy Institute and a former spokesman for the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, wrote, “It is incomprehensible that the Swiss
government would seek to undermine global pressure on Iran that is designed to
blunt Tehran’s dangerous nuclear ambitions. A respectable member of the
international community would not allow its banking system to help Iran evade
sanctions, yet it appears the Swiss government is shamefully doing exactly
that.
“It begs the question, whose side are they on, Tehran or the West?”
Block asked.
Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a leading expert on European-
Iranian relations, told the
Post on Saturday, “Of course the US is right to be
angry about this behavior” from the Swiss. “Switzerland thinks apparently
only about its egoistical national interests and betrays the Western consensus
by remaining behind a mask of neutrality.”
Wahdat-Hagh, a senior fellow
at the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy, said that the
“sanctions are still painful for Iran” and “therefore the Swiss must show their
true colors and explain to the world what neutrality toward totalitarian
dictators means.”
Beyer said Switzerland had cited its role as a
go-between for Washington and Tehran and its history of neutrality as reasons
for not following the EU on Iran sanctions.
Switzerland has represented
US interests in Iran since 1980, following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. It is
not a member of the EU and has no legal obligation to follow EU
sanctions.
Switzerland’s body for enforcing sanctions, the Swiss
Secretariat for Economics, said on Thursday that the Federal Council had not
indicated when it would make a final decision on the Iranian
sanctions.
Beyer continued, “My reading of the Swiss leadership is they
very much do not want Switzerland to become an outlet for evading sanctions. I
don’t think that’s what they want or what they would tolerate.”
Efforts
to secure on a comment on Saturday from the Swiss Foreign Ministry were
unsuccessful.
It is unclear how much of Tehran’s oil exports, estimated
at below 2 million barrels per day, are traded or financed via Switzerland,
where a third of global oil exports by volume is traded.
The Swiss have
long been seen as making the least effort in Europe to confront Iran’s nuclear
enrichment program. The US sanctioned in 2010 Switzerland’s Naftiran
Intertrade Co. a subsidiary of Tehran’s National Iranian Oil Co., for pumping
“hundreds of millions of dollars” into energy projects in the Islamic
Republic.
Reuters contributed to this report