{"id":51,"date":"2015-04-16T15:24:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T15:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/?p=51"},"modified":"2015-04-16T15:24:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T15:24:11","slug":"defrosted-will-german-firms-plunge-head-first-into-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/defrosted-will-german-firms-plunge-head-first-into-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Defrosted: Will German Firms Plunge Head First Into Iran?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"benz\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

German companies are ready to reinvest in Iran. Is this a smart move?<\/h2>\n

By Benjamin Weinthal, Maximillian Kiewel, April 15, 2015<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With a framework in place for addressing the Iran nuclear issue, Germany, a member of the P5+1 powers negotiating with Tehran, stands to reap an economic windfall. German investment in Iran, however, is a double-edged sword. When it comes to the uncertainties of sanctions relief for Iran\u2019s battered economy and the misuse of technology for domestic repression, Germany\u2019s business community may face enormous challenges.<\/p>\n

The November 2013 Joint Plan of Action interim agreement sparked a 30-percent rise in German exports<\/a> to the Islamic Republic in 2014 to reach \u20ac2.4 billion.<\/p>\n

German businesses are straining at the leash to reenter the Iranian market. Michael Tockuss, managing board member at the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce Association in Hamburg, said Iran is \u201ctotally dependent\u201d on German spare parts and suppliers, and estimates that annual exports to Iran could rise to \u20ac5 billion or \u20ac6 billion<\/a> after a comprehensive deal. The Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Germany see a \u20ac12 billion benchmark<\/a> in the coming years.<\/p>\n

According to a 2014 in-house list compiled by the Tehran-based German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce and Industry<\/a>, scores of German enterprises are already conducting flourishing trade with Iran. The forty-four-page brochure lists over one hundred German and Iranian companies.<\/p>\n

German companies sell a broad spectrum of goods to Iran, ranging from confection-industry items to vacuum cleaners, and from Mercedes-Benz coupes to heavy earth-moving equipment. Herrenknecht AG, for example, is a global engineering giant that manufactures \u201ctailor-made machines for transport tunnels and supply and disposal tunnels,\u201d including \u201cstate of-the-art deep drilling rigs that drill down to a depth of 6,000 meters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if Iran might use its equipment to hide nuclear facilities, a Herrenknecht spokespeople consistently told us that its drills are used \u201csolely reach projects which clearly pursue civil applications (metro tunnel construction, sewage pipes and water supply lines).\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Israel, the transfer of technology to Iran that could be used to build underground military and nuclear installations rings alarms. A \u201cGerman company in Tehran would never be able to ensure that their construction projects were not used for Iran\u2019s nuclear or military facilities,\u201d Ephraim Asculai, a scholar with Israel\u2019s Institute for National Security Studies and former official with the International Atomic Energy Agency, told us.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s effort to break sanctions and obtain German technology is hardly surprising. According to a November 2014 report <\/a>in the daily Tagesspiegel<\/em>, the German custom authority\u2019s criminal investigation unit (ZKA) said Iran had made significant efforts last year to obtain components from Germany for its nuclear program. \u201cWe continue to observe criminal nuclear proliferation activity,\u201d ZKA president Norbert Drude said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sanctions on Iran have hurt German businesses\u2019 bottom lines. For Germany, reviving the robust pre-sanctions annual bilateral trade of more than $5 billion will be a tricky endeavor. The ambiguous\u2014and unsigned\u2014framework deal has, paradoxically, prompted insecurity among German investors and companies fearful that they will reenter the Iranian economy only to be forced out again soon after.<\/p>\n

The then-Finnish-German joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks sold advanced surveillance technology to Iran in 2008. Tehran later used the technology to stifle internet, social-media, cellular and landline communications during the 2009 Green Movement protests against presidential election fraud.<\/p>\n

Iranian democrats subsequently called for a boycott of Nokia<\/a>, and the German Green Party raised questions in the Bundestag<\/a> about the supply of surveillance equipment to Iran.<\/p>\n

The head of the Tehran office of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, Daniel Bernbeck, said during the repression of 2009 that there is \u201cno moral question here at all\u201d<\/a> about conducting business with Iran. Just in January, Bernbeck raised eyebrows among Iranian dissidents in Berlin because of his Iranian-European business forum with German MP Peter Ramsauer, head of the Bundestag\u2019s economic and energy committee.<\/p>\n

In 2010, the business daily Handelsblatt<\/em> reported<\/a> that Germany\u2019s foreign ministry and central bank had organized a sanctions-busting transaction with the Hamburg-based Europ\u00e4isch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH). The bank was already on the list of U.S. Treasury\u2013designated terror-finance entities over having transferred funds to Tehran\u2019s nuclear-proliferation efforts and alleged missile program.
\nSourse: http:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/feature\/defrosted-will-german-firms-plunge-head-first-iran-12631<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German companies are ready to reinvest in Iran. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,23,27,25,28,26],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-appeasement","tag-benjamin-weinthal","tag-german-companies","tag-herrenknecht-ag","tag-maximillian-kiewel","tag-mercedes-benz","tag-nokia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iraniansforum.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}