MESOP : MADAME MERKEL & THE IRAN SANCTIONS

5 Oct 2015- THE HILL – For Germany, if past is prologue, sanctions enforcement will be downplayed. In 2010, President Obama sought to persuade Chancellor Angela Merkel to shut down the Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (EIH). The then-International Herald Tribune columnist John Vinocur wrote at the time: “I also have been told that similar reluctance, this time involving German hesitation to clamp down on a bank in Hamburg facilitating suspect European deals with Iran, resulted in a recent phone call, to no immediate avail, from Mr. Obama to Chancellor Angela Merkel.”

Obama’s Treasury Department designated EIH a sanctioned bank because, “As one of Iran’s few remaining access points to the European financial system, EIH has facilitated a tremendous volume of transactions for Iranian banks previously [blacklisted] for proliferation.”

A bipartisan group of US senators issued a strongly worded letter to Germany’s then-Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle asking him to shut down EIH’s operation in Germany, and a WikiLeaks dispatch revealed: “Germany won’t sanction German Bank EIH” because “the German business community is very powerful.” Merkel resisted and resisted.

After a nationwide scandal became public with the EIH transferring €1.5 billion in dubious oil payments via the German central bank (the Deutsche Bundesbank) to Iran, Merkel capitulated. The EIH was included in the EU terror list.

Consider: Is the German government now prepared to report small-scale violations of the Iran nuclear deal, when it previously was indifferent to large-scale sanctions evasion? http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/255701-europe-has-billions-of-reasons-to-let-iran-cheat