A German forum that seeks to promote business deals with Iran, featuring politicians and government bodies, has come under fire by human rights experts for turning a blind eye to the Islamic Republic’s illicit nuclear activities, sponsorship of terrorism, and oppression of the Iranian people.
Benjamin Weinthal reported in The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the ‘Banking and Business Forum Iran Europe’, will take place on November 15 and 16 as part of the Euro Finance Week in Frankfurt. The forum wants to remove the financial barriers that currently exist for business deals with Iran.
Julie Lenarz, a senior fellow for The Israel Project, based in Washington, told the Post that “Iran hasn’t stopped being a threat to international peace and security”, adding that “It’s a pariah state, ruled by a fanatical mullah regime with malign nuclear ambitions, and should be isolated as the world’s largest exporter of terrorism.”
“Key sectors of the Iranian economy are controlled by the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the country’s driving force behind Islamic extremism, war crimes in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and annihilationist threats against the state of Israel,” she said. “Rather than attending cushy meetings in the West, Iranian officials should be indicted for crimes against humanity.”
Lenarz added that, “If you do business with the IRGC, you sponsor Tehran’s aggression abroad and violence against their own people.”
Set to speak at the event are German-Iranian bankers as well as Tarek Al-Wazir, the Hessian Minister of Economic Affairs and Omid Nouripour, foreign policy spokesman of the German Green Party. Nouripour has a record of supporting the anti-Semitic BDS movement. In 2013, he helped navigate a pro-BDS initiative targeting the Jewish state in the Bundestag.
Nasrin Amirsedghi, a leading Iranian dissident and public intellectual in Germany, commented that “Historically examined, the party, the Greens, have always since their founding in 1980 supported terrorists… It is obvious that they continue to go this way. They idolized Ruhollah Khomeini [the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran] and actively helped the mullahs sit firmly in the saddle today.” He added that Al-Wazir and Nouripour are “supporting terrorists” and “that is, for me, a scandal.”
Ulrike Becker, a spokeswoman for the NGO Stop the Bomb, echoed his sentiments, “This banking forum is scandalous. German bankers and politicians in Frankfurt are rolling out the red carpet for a regime which is responsible for the flight of millions [of refugees] from Syria and Iraq.”
Becker also slammed federal German agencies for taking part in the forum, “The list of speakers shows that the initiative for boosting Iran’s business comes from the government. Institutions such as the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) that are responsible for risk control of foreign trade, are involved in propaganda for trade with Iran.”
Iran’s involvement in terrorist finance and money laundering prompted the international financial regulator Financial Action Task Force to label Iran a “high risk” country for business.
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