German Chancellor Angela Merkel's speech in German before the Knesset this afternoon will be the culmination of what the Israeli media has referred to as an "historic" three-day state visit to Israel. The day before Merkel launched her "historic" visit, Der Spiegel reported on the "historic" visit of another German to Afghanistan.
That visit ended on March 3 when the visitor in question, known as Cüneyt C. from Bavaria and also known as Saad Ebu Furkan blew himself up in front of a US guard post in Khost, an hour's drive from the border with Pakistan where the German-Turk underwent terror training. Two US soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded after being trapped beneath the rubble, making C. Germany's first successful suicide bomber.
Although the first German to kill US forces, C.'s associate, Sadullah K. a young German from the state of Hesse died trying. K. was killed in October in a US airstrike along the Pakistan-Afghan border after he also underwent training in Pakistan. Both men belonged to the German-based Islamic Jihad Union. The IJU made headlines in September when German investigators rounded up the leaders of an IJU cell which was planning massive attacks against American targets in Germany. These leaders - also Germans - were in contact with both C. and K. who escaped the police dragnet and made it to Pakistan after travelling through Turkey and Iran.
And of course, Germany's reputation as a home for al-Qaida-like jihadists was burnished by Saudi and Egyptian nationals who studied in Hamburg several years ago. Led by Muhammad Atta, they enjoyed German hospitality while planning the attacks they carried out in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
MERKEL, WHO presents herself and her country as Israel's greatest friend and supporter in Europe, will no doubt ignore this story in her Knesset speech. She will doubtlessly also not mention that her country is Iran's largest importer. She might mention that last year Germany did cancel a half of its loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. But she won't mention that the move has had almost no impact on trade volume. In a recent report on German firms in Iran, Reuters interviewed British businessman Robert Mills, who runs DHL's operation in Teheran. DHL, the express delivery firm is a unit of the mail and logistics group Deutsche Post.
Mills gushed about the booming business his firm is doing in Iran, in spite of the international sanctions. Mills said the tonnage handled by DHL jumped by 50 per cent in the last two years and the company has doubled its turnover in Iran since 2005 on the back of rising imports of everything from telecommunications equipment to car spare parts.
Like Mills, other businessmen representing German firms reported booming businesses and expanding opportunities in spite of UN sanctions. Business managers reported that their earnings have doubled and tripled in the past two years.
Iran's faith in its German business partners is apparently unlimited. Why else would it be considering listing $92 billion in shares of its energy holding company on the Frankfurt stock exchange? As MEED, the Middle East Business Intelligence Report reported Sunday, with over 1,700 German firms operating in Iran, the fact that Germany recently broke off banking ties with Iranian banks is not viewed as an obstacle to listing the firm on the Frankfurt exchange. A spokeswoman for Deutsche Borse, the company which manages the exchange told the journal that it would have no objection to listing the Iranian firm.
GERMANY'S actions toward Iran cannot be squared with Merkel's rhetoric of support for Israel and commitment to Israel's security. Both Germany's actions and its pro-Israel rhetoric can only be understood when seen through the lens of power politics - which is the lens that informs European policymakers in their decisions relating to Israel, Iran, the Middle East, and indeed the world as a whole.
Power politics are a function of two main components - the threat of war and violence, and economic leverage. From the Europeans' perspective, the Arab world and Iran wield both weapons of power politics against them. Through restive, increasingly radicalized Muslim minority populations in Europe - like C. and K. and their IJU colleagues in Germany and Pakistan - the Islamic world wields the threat of terror over the heads of European leaders. And through oil, they wield the ultimate commercial gun at Europe's head.
Neither the EU nor any single European state has managed to put together a coherent or rational domestic policy for contending with the threat posed by Europe's Muslim minorities. And so, the issue has been deflected to the realm of foreign policy. There, combined with the oil threat, the Europeans have contended with Arab and Islamic pressure by opting to appease them. This they do by attacking Israel, supporting the Palestinians, and preventing the disarmament or political defeat of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
The Europeans act as they do for a combination of reasons. First, they have no real military capacity to either defend themselves or attack the Arab and Muslim states which foment rebellion among their own Muslim minorities. Second, they have no wish to use their collective commercial power. If they were interested in the latter of course, they could paralyze the Iranian economy in weeks simply by cutting off their trade with Teheran. And third, the ultimate military free riders, they trust that the US or Israel, which are both more directly threatened by Iran's nuclear program than they, will take out Iran's nuclear installations for them.
THE EU'S appeasement policies have been made clear through their actions as the commanders of UNIFIL forces in Lebanon since the Second Lebanon War. It was Israel's hope that European forces, which make up the majority of the 15,000 UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon, would prevent Hizbullah from rearming after the war and, perhaps, help to strengthen the pro-Western Siniora government against Syrian, Iranian and Hizbullah attempts to overthrow it. Yet the opposite has occurred. Since the war, and under the blind eyes of the Europeans, Hizbullah has rebuilt its forces. Three years after the March 14 demonstration which fomented the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, the Siniora government is paralyzed and the March 14 Movement is demoralized and in disarray.
