Are Europeans Nuts? Why Would They Sell Nuclear Weapons Materiel To Iran? Is Profiting So Important?

Europe Eager to Arm Islamist Extremists with Nuclear Weapons

by Peter Martino
March 24, 2015 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5436/europe-islamist-extremists-nuclear-weapons

32

Comment

European countries, such as Germany, expect huge economic benefits if Western sanctions on Iran are lifted.
Those economic benefits to Iran will pay for its nuclear weapons to attack the West – an updated version of Lenin's, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."

The European Union says it is "not helpful" to "spread fears" about the impending nuclear deal with Iran. The so-called P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, hope to clinch a framework agreement with Iran by the end of this month and a final agreement by June 30. Three of the six P5+1 members -- Britain, France and Germany -- are EU member states.
Last week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others who warn that supplying Iran with the means to make nuclear weapons is dangerous. Mogherini, successor to the infamous Catherine Ashton, said that the Iranian nuclear deal is "a good deal" and that she is committed to bringing the talks with Iran to a positive end.
In the proposed agreement, the international economic sanctions against Iran will be lifted in exchange for Tehran allowing international inspectors into the country to control whether Iran is enriching uranium exclusively for peaceful purposes. The deal is a major concession to Iran, since a 2010 UN resolution prohibited Iran from enriching uranium. Furthermore, the deal stipulates that all restrictions on Iran's nuclear program will be completely eliminated after ten years.
In a recent speech before the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that Iran should only be allowed to develop a nuclear program if it can prove that it meets three concrete demands: stop threatening the existence of Israel, stop bullying other countries, and stop exporting terrorism. Neither the Obama administration in Washington nor its European alliesseem impressed with Netanyahu's request. They are of the opinion that any deal with Iran is better than no deal at all. The argument is that Iran will be able to develop a nuclear bomb anyway and that a bad deal, while not preventing this horror scenario, might be able to slow the Iranian plans down – a premise that is, however, totally false.
The current economic sanctions against Iran have been put in place to slow down any nuclear weapons plans the Iranian regime clearly has. A "bad deal" will only slow the Iranians down if the mullahs keep their promise to enrich uranium solely for civilian purposes. No one, however, could actually be expecting them to keep any promise. They never have in the past, or there would be no centrifuges enriching uranium to be arguing about in the first place. From the deal reportedly under discussion, Iranian nuclear-breakout capability is not only likely, but possible within months.
Allowing international inspectors into the country to control this would only be useful if there were an absolute guarantee, with "bullet-proof" safeguards, that the inspectors would be able to discover any cheating on the part of the Iranians -- an occurrence that would be a historical first, and has less than no chance of happening.
Iran has never made a secret of its intention to acquire a nuclear bomb in order, it has repeated, to put down Israel, which it calls "The Little Satan." In addition, it is also widely assumed by those watching Iran and its proxies encircle the Middle East oilfields, take over Iraq under the guise of fighting the Islamic State, and spread throughout South America, that Israel would be just the first stop. Iran's missile reach is already sufficient to control Europe -- not even by using nuclear-tipped missiles, just by threatening to.
With its current program of building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), presumably with the help of North Korea, another early violator of its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- Iran could then mount nuclear warheads aimed at the United States, "The Big Satan." Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, called for "Death to America" as recently as March 21.
While U.S. President Barack Obama is eager to conclude a deal with the Iranians, many in the U.S. Congress are unconvinced. Reportedly, according to them, putting one's trust in the mullahs is simply too big a risk for the national security of the free world, first and foremost the United States.
Considering that in the past century millions of Jews were exterminated by a genocidal ideology in Europe, one would expect Europeans to be particularly concerned about another attempt to slaughter millions of Jews, not to mention potentially themselves. But from recent articles saturating the media in recent weeks, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that this is exactly what the Europeans again want.
The media throughout Europe excoriated Israel's Prime Minister address warning the American legislature about the danger of Iranian nuclear weapons. But the question of why one should allow Iran a nuclear weapons deal, if it does not pledge never to obliterate Israel with nuclear weapons, should also be put before the European politicians.
Again, however, even if Iran did pledge not to obliterate Israel, what makes anyone think that Iran would honor this pledge, if it did not honor any of its other pledges? And if it did not honor this pledge, what would be the negative fallout for it? And administered by whom? The "negative fallout" for violating the NPT has been the ability to go right on violating it and having harsh sanctions lifted as well. With consequences like that, one can only wonder what the Europeans must be putting in their Chablis.
Sadly, the Europeans seem to prefer to appease Iran's international bullies. Perhaps they are of the dreamy hope that having nuclear weapons will cause the bullies stop being bullies instead of magnifying that trait.
At first, Mogherini attempted to dismiss the concerns of the U.S. Congressmen as a matter of "internal domestic political tensions" in America, where many Republicans disagree with President Obama on the Iranian deal. Last week, however, when 47 Republican Senators wrote an open letter to Iran, warning that a future American President could revoke Obama's agreement with the mullahs, the Europeans took aim directly at the Senators. "This is no small matter we're talking about," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "This is not just an issue of American domestic politics." His British colleague, Philip Hammond, was not amused either. He said the letter "could become a spanner in the works," jeopardizing the deal with Iran.
Earlier, Senator Ted Cruz had said that the U.S. and European capitulation to Iran was reminiscent of Europe's appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
Senator John McCain reacted to Steinmeier's remarks by saying the German foreign minister "is in the Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy" -- a reference to the British Prime Minister who, in 1938, signed the Munich agreement, which sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
In the same way, the Europeans now seem prepared to sell out Israel to the mullahs, in the similar delusion that Iran's aggression would actually end there -- when history has already proven quite the opposite.
The criticism clearly hit a raw nerve among the Europeans and angered them immensely. Perhaps it forced them to see an uncomfortable truth they did not want to look at.
European countries, such as Germany, expect huge economic benefits if the Western sanctions on Iran are lifted. When some of the sanctions were eased last year, German exports to Iran increased with over 30 percent to 2.4 billion euros. Germany is Iran's biggest European trading partner. British companies, too, are eagerly preparing to carve out their share of the Iranian market once sanctions are lifted. Italy, the home country of EU foreign policy chief Mogherini, has also expressed the hope that a nuclear deal with Iran would expand economic relations between Tehran and Rome.
Those economic benefits to Iran will pay for nuclear weapons to attack the West -- an updated version of Lenin's, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
Notably, of all the Western nations, France takes the most hawkish position regarding the nuclear weapons deal.

Appearances can be deceiving: Peter Martino writes that France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is said to have "absolutely no trust" in the Iranian regime regarding a nuclear deal. Above, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif hugs Laurent Fabius, at the close of nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 23, 2014. (Image source: ISNA)

So far, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has adopted a tough stance on Iran. Fabius was Prime Minister of France in the mid-1980s when relations between Paris and Tehran were extremely tense as a result of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks in France and Lebanon. He is said to have "absolutely no trust" in the mullahs.
Most analysts, however, say they do not expect France to take the risk of ruining the negotiations, since it would jeopardize France's relations both with the Obama administration and with other European countries. But are those considerations actually a greater threat than arming Islamist fundamentalists with the ultimate weapon of death?
French companies also expect to benefit from the lifting of the sanctions. In fact, a French commercial delegation already went to Iran in February last year to scout for business opportunities. It was the first European economic delegation in decades to arrive in Tehran.