Tensions
Mount Between US And Europe Over War Threat Against Iran
By Stefan Steinberg
08 February, 2007
World
Socialist Web
As
Washington steps up its campaign of propaganda and aggression against
Iran, some leading European politicians and sections of the media have
expressed their concern during the past week over the increasing danger
of a US military provocation plunging the entire Middle East into chaos.
Three former senior US military
commanders—Generals Robert G. Gard and Joseph P. Hoar and Vice
Admiral Jack Shanahan—sent a letter to the British Sunday Times,
published on Sunday, February 4, warning of the consequences of any
US military attack on Iran.
Clearly attempting to mobilize
European public opinion against the plans of the Bush administration,
the US generals bluntly declared: “An attack on Iran would have
disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces
in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions. The
current crisis must be resolved through diplomacy.”
Former German Foreign Minister
Joshka Fischer made a similar warning last week in the pages of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung. Fischer himself is no opponent of war—as
German foreign minister in 1998-1999, he played a vital role in paving
the way in Yugoslavia for the first international military intervention
by the post-war German army—and he is certainly no enemy of Washington.
While in office, he maintained the closest relations with the secretary
of state under President Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright. But in his
comment for the SZ, Fischer warns against repeating what he euphemistically
terms the Bush administration’s “mistakes” in Iraq
by seeking “regime change” in Teheran and extending hostilities
into Iran.
The fears of chaos in the
Middle East resulting from a military strike by the US against Iran
were most clearly summed up in a column last week by journalist Ulrich
Ladurner writing for one of Germany’s leading weekly publications,
Die Zeit. Referring to Bush, Ladurner writes: “He is weak, that
is correct, but that is by no means any guarantee that he will not plunge
into a further adventure. Quite the opposite, his weakness is a danger.
It is precisely the disaster in Iraq that could induce the Bush government
to carry the war over the borders of Iraq, into the middle of Iran.
“The US used this strategy
in the seventies in Southeast Asia. When they could proceed no further
in Vietnam, they drew Cambodia and Laos into the war. Weakness can also
be a motive for going to war.
“The Democrats are
currently vigorously attacking his Iraq policy, but that by no means
implies that they would not be ready to support an attack on Iran. It
all depends on the reason. If the Bush government is able to successfully
demonstrate that Iran is directly involved in the killing of US soldiers,
then the Democrats would hardly oppose it—as was the case in 2003.
Then ‘the hour of the patriot’ would be at hand. And as
we are well aware, there are very many of these in the ranks of the
Democrats.”
Washington pressures Europe to break links with Iran
Parallel to preparations
for a US military strike—or an Israeli provocation with US support—Washington
is also increasing pressure on European companies and governments to
break commercial and financial relations with Iran.
Under strong pressure from
the US, European governments supported a United Nations Security Council
resolution in December 2006 giving Iran 60 days to halt its uranium-enrichment
program or face economic sanctions. Now, the US is stepping up the ante
and demanding firm and rapid measures by European companies, banks and
governments to cut their ties with Teheran.
According to a report in
the New York Times, one senior US administration official declared,
“We are telling the Europeans that they need to go way beyond
what they’ve done to maximize pressure on Iran.” The official
went on, however, to complain about the European reaction: “The
European response on the economic side has been pretty weak.”
The US administration is
particularly targeting loans made by European governments to Iran. According
to the International Union of Credit and Investment Insurers, European
loans to the Iranian government in 2005 amounted to US$18 billion. The
biggest donors were Italy (US$6.2 billion/4.7 billion euros), Germany
(US$5.4 billion/4.17 billion euros), France (US$1.4 billion/1.08 billion
euros) and Spain and Austria, each with US$1 billion dollars (772 million
euros).
In addition, US Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson has sent European governments a list of 30 Iranian
companies, which, according to Washington, are involved in terrorism
or armaments production, and should no longer be treated as trading
partners. Iranian banks with branches in Europe have also been targeted
for sanctions.
While US officials claim
that the move to intensify economic and financial sanctions against
Iran is driven by the latter’s nuclear-enrichment program, Washington
has also registered alarm over the Iranian government’s move to
switch all its foreign transactions, including those involving its main
revenue earner—oil (80 percent of all foreign earnings)—from
the dollar to the euro.
On December 18, a spokesman
for the Iranian government, Gholam Hossein Elham, declared in Teheran
that the government intended to transfer all foreign trade payments
from the dollar. The measure was partly planned as a political response
to US aggression against Iran, but was also based on the fact that Iran
is currently forced to sell its oil for the weak dollar and then pay
for its imports in Europe with the stronger euro. Such a move would
have enormous implications for US imperialism, possibly leading to a
major shift by other countries out of the dollar and into the euro.
In terms of trade and finance,
Europe already has large-scale interests at stake in Iran and surrounding
countries in the Middle East. This explains European reluctance to accede
to the current US requests. As one European official stated: “We
are going to be very cautious about what the Treasury Department wants
us to do. We can see that banks are slowing their business with Iran.
But, because there are huge European business interests involved, we
have to be very careful.”
Italy, Germany, France, Spain,
Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain all have extensive business
dealings with Iran, particularly in energy. In addition to buying oil
from Iran, European countries also export machinery, industrial equipment
and commodities, which have no military application and have nothing
to do with what the US claims are attempts by Iran to develop nuclear
weaponry.
Countering recent US criticism
of Austria’s business links with Iran, European deputy and vice
chairman of the SPE (Party of European Socialists) fraction in the European
parliament Hannes Swoboda reacted by declaring: “The intervention
of the United States against normal economic relations with Iran is
completely unjustified. Europe and the European economy should not be
forced to pay for the failed Iran policy of the US.” Swoboda called
upon the Austrian government to clearly defend its business interests
against US pressure.
The extent of European hostility
to US policy in the Middle East also exploded to the surface last week
in the form of comments made by French President Jacques Chirac. In
an interview with a number of French and US newspapers, Chirac baldly
declared that, should Iran send nuclear missiles against Israel, Teheran
would be wiped off the map in a matter of minutes.
Upon being reminded in the
course of a brief and fiercely critical media campaign that official
US and European policy is to undertake measures to stop Iran from acquiring
nuclear capabilities in the first place, Chirac played down and revised
his remarks the next day. Nevertheless, the damage had been done. In
the space of one outburst, Chirac had revealed his determination to
strike a path independent of the US and its “coalition of the
willing,” while at the same time making clear that in the defense
of French capitalism he was prepared to be every bit as ruthless and
brutal as his counterpart sitting in the White House.
The role of Germany between Europe and the US
Increasing divisions across
the Atlantic as well as between the major capitalist powers in Europe
itself form the backdrop to the latest trip by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel to the Gulf region. Merkel’s four-day trip to four Arab
and Gulf states—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates
and Kuwait—follows on the heels of a similar recent itinerary
by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Like Rice, Merkel is seeking
to whip up support in the Gulf fiefdoms for a policy aimed at isolating
Iran and the Hamas and Hezbollah movements in Palestine and Lebanon.
At the same time, Merkel hopes to compensate for probable future losses
of German interests in Iran through intensified trade links with the
region, which is at the moment under the protective wing of the US military.
In many respects, German
capitalism has the most to lose of all the European states in the event
of a conflict between the US and Iran. Germany is the biggest European
exporter to Iran (4.3-billion-euro exports in 2005 - an increase of
more than 50 percent compared with 2002), and much of this trade is
bound up with the lucrative Iranian oil industry. Some of Germany’s
biggest companies—Siemens, BASF, Linde—are active in Iran,
in addition to many smaller German firms.
Nevertheless, since coming
to power in 2005, the German chancellor has refused to utter a word
of criticism against the disastrous US war and occupation of Iraq and
has proved to be one of the most steadfast European supporters of the
US administration.
Together with Britain and
France, Germany played a crucial role in enforcing the UN economic sanctions
against Iran last December. Merkel has since provided vital political
cover for intensified US aggression in the Middle East by calling for
a revival of the imperialist quartet—the EU, the US, Russia and
the United Nations—and a new initiative to isolate radical Islamist
movements.
Following her recent visit
to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Rice made Berlin her first
European port of call and fulsomely praised the support and understanding
of the Berlin government for US policy in the region. In an interview
with the Financial Times last week, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier went so far as to express his hope for “the US to play
a greater role in the Middle East than in the past.”
Now in her role as EU president
and chair of the upcoming G8 summit, the German chancellor is determined
to continue her policy of appeasement towards the US. Washington officials
say that Merkel has been responsive on the issue of economic sanctions
against Iran, and at least one German bank, Commerzbank, has recently
suspended trading in dollars with the country.
Merkel is also determined
that German business interests be allowed to expand in the Middle East
and Gulf area. Despite the fact that the ostensible reason for her visit
was to revive the “peace roadmap” in the Middle East, she
traveled as head of a delegation of 40 German business leaders, including
her Economics Minister Michael Glos and representatives from Deutsche
Bank, Siemens, Deutsche Bahn, and the Wintershall energy group. Important
issues on the chancellor’s schedule are attendance at the German-Emirates
business forum in the United Arab Emirates and discussions in Saudi
Arabia over German technical support and transport links for Saudi Arabia
in the event of a sea blockade of the Persian Gulf by Iran.
For Chancellor Merkel (Christian
Democratic Union) and her foreign minister Steinmeier (Social Democratic
Party), the current instability in the Middle East presents fresh opportunities
to stake out German economic influence in the region under conditions
in which American influence there is weakened. In so doing, however,
the German government is recklessly strengthening the hand of the Bush
administration to spread its Iraqi bloodbath throughout the region—with
immense and horrific consequences not only for the peoples of the Middle
East, but also for working people in Europe and America.
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