by Eldad Beck
Their support for Iran strips them of the right to preach morality unto others and makes them solely responsible for the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.
In
2003, shortly after the Iranian opposition revealed the existence of
Tehran's covert nuclear program, three global powers – Germany, France
and the U.K. – enlisted their efforts, along with then-EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana, to persuade Iran to abandon its atomic
aspirations. The Europeans called those negotiations, which lasted for
three years, "critical discourse."
What that meant, cynics quipped, was that
the Europeans and Iranians were sitting down together to criticize the
United States. It goes without saying that those talks ended in abject
failure: The Iranians signed agreements with the Europeans, but violated
them even before the ink had dried. We should have expected the
Europeans to learn from their inability to cope with Iranian guile, but
the Europeans excel at constantly recycling their mistakes and failures.
One day before U.S. President Donald
Trump's crucial decision on the future of the Iran nuclear agreement,
which would have fulfilled his promise to rip that "bad deal" to shreds,
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif flew to Brussels for a
meeting with the current iteration of the "three plus one forum" – in
other words, with his counterparts from Europe's three prominent powers
and the EU. Instead of being reprimanded for the deadly and violent
suppression of popular protests against the Iranian government, for the
Islamic republic's ongoing development of its ballistic missile program
and for its expanding involvement in undermining stability in the Middle
East, the four foreign ministers gave Iran and the nuclear deal their
complete support and forced Trump into a corner. The crux of their joint
statement following the meeting with Zarif: Iran is fully complying
with the nuclear deal; thus there is no reason to impose new economic
sanctions or to refuse to lift old ones, as the agreement stipulates.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel went
as far as saying that Europe and Iran want to protect the nuclear deal
from any decision that jeopardizes it. While Gabriel was defending the
Iranian regime in Brussels, German authorities were busy smuggling
prominent regime figure Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, in the
midst of a complex medical procedure, out of a German hospital back to
Iran.
Shahroudi headed Iran's judiciary from 1999
to 2009. During that time he allegedly carried out more than 2,000
executions, including of adolescents, while overseeing the torture of
prisoners and arrests of political and human rights activists. After
Iranian dissidents exposed his hospitalization in Germany, complaints
were filed with local police to arrest him. The German government, which
facilitated Shahroudi's arrival in the country "under the cover of
darkness," also took pains to return him home safely.
Sigmar Gabriel was the first senior Western
official who rushed to visit Iran, even before the nuclear deal was
approved, to guarantee his Germany's economic interests in a country
Berlin perceives as a historical ally. These interests are compelling
Germany and the EU to support Tehran over Washington. "Universal and
humanitarian" principles are apparently no longer a factor for the
Europeans. Their support for Iran strips them of the right to preach
morality unto others and makes them solely responsible for the
development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.
Eldad Beck
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/europe-intractable-hypocrisy/?redirected=224327
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