ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY OCTOBER 12, 2011
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As the world witnesses the Syrian and Iranian regimes commit countless human rights abuses and, in Iran’s case, move ever closer to perfecting its nuclear capabilities, there’s a common belief that, short of military intervention, there’s nothing that can be done. As it turns out, however, that’s far from the truth—but the majority of the initiative must come from Europe. The European Union has thus far failed to confront the Iranian and Syrian regimes to the full extent of its ability. Though they are loath to admit it, European countries are Iran’s and Syria’s best customers, providing the EU with significant leverage. Meaningful energy sanctions could deliver a one-two punch to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s ongoing campaign to snuff out his country’s democratic reformers.
To its credit, the EU imposed oil sanctions on the Syrian regime in September, barring its 27 members from purchasing Syrian oil. Given that the EU consumes 95 percent of Syria’s oil exports, the embargo could potentially cripple the country’s economy. But there are loopholes in the EU sanctions that allow European energy firms to maintain their investments in Syrian oil fields, continue producing oil from them, and continue delivering it to their EU customers until mid-November. As a result, major European energy companies continue to operate there, including the United Kingdom’s Gulfsands Petreoleum and Petrofac, Hungary’s MOL, France’s Total, Croatia’s INA Industrija Nafte d.d, and the joint Dutch-British enterprise Royal Dutch Shell.
And when it comes to Iran, the EU remains the country’s most important global trade partner. Just last year, the total trade volume between the EU and Iran exceeded €25 billion. Almost 90 percent of Europe’s imports from Iran are energy, making the Islamic Republic the sixth-largest energy provider to the EU. While U.S. companies are prohibited from purchasing Iranian gas, and the Obama administration pushed the EU to ban the export of energy technology to Iran, Europe continues to buy Iranian gas. In addition, Iran joined Syria and Iraq in July as a signatory to a $10 billion natural gas pipeline agreement, under which Syria would eventually buy between 20 and 25 million cubic meters of Iranian gas per day, and run an extended transportation operation—the so-called “Islamic Gas Pipeline”—to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea, through which it would pipe gas into Europe.
If the EU decided to reduce its Iranian gas imports, the measures could jolt Iran’s fragile energy market, prompting secondary pain to the cash-strapped Syrian regime that Iran is aiding. Iran’s highly vulnerable energy sector has long been considered its Achilles’ heel. The country finances its nuclear program with invaluable revenue from its energy sector. A staggering 70 percent of Iran’s governmental revenues derive from its petroleum business, which makes up 80 percent of the country’s export activities.
Instead, however, the EU—and especially Germany, which is Iran’s number one EU trading partner—continues to have a soft spot for the Iranian regime when it comes to trade. Despite the new EU sanctions, German exports to the Islamic Republic increased by 2.6 percent between 2009 and 2010, reaching a total of €3.8 billion. German exports then dropped from approximately €2.22 billion for the first half of 2010 to roughly €1.76 billion for the first half of 2011, but German imports of Iranian goods increased from to €382 million to €453 million during the same time period. The Federal Republic’s consumption of Iranian gas and oil rose during the first six months of 2011 to €280 million, up from €197 million in the first half of 2010.
Moreover, Germany continues to lend political legitimacy to Iran’s leaders. Last October, a cross-section of German parliamentarians ranging from the Greens to Merkel’s Christian Democrats visited Iran and met with Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the head of Iran’s parliamentary cultural committee, who supported Iran’s fatwa against British novelist Salman Rushdie. The delegation also chatted with then-Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who delivered a key speech at Tehran’s 2006 Holocaust denial conference, and Mohammad Javad Larijani, who heads the Iranian human rights council and famously called for Israel’s destruction at a German foreign ministry-sponsored event in Berlin in 2008. During their almost one-week stay in Iran, the German deputies uttered not a word of criticism of Iran’s nuclear and human rights violations.
The United States has deployed every measure in its power short of military force to persuade the Iranian and Syrian regimes to change their policies. For all its humanitarian sentiment, however, Europe has done nothing of the kind. And until it truly gets serious with its trading partners, don’t expect their behavior to change.
Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based investigative journalist and fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
11 comments
US : Saudi Arabia :: EU : Iran Terrible that much of this tolerance for tarnishing our international images is because of oil.
- chaitless
October 12, 2011 at 1:02am
I'm still pissed at Iran for spreading the scourge of EFPs within their neighbors' borders. My unit shared a COP with a unit who had an MRAP get hit with one a couple years ago; the EFP penetrated an absurd amount of the vehicle's armor and killed a young soldier who specialized in engineer work and construction. It adds a layer of grotesque ridiculousness to the tragedy to consider that some friendly European nations might be funding Iran's weaponry exports. And now we can add funding Mexican drug cartels by way of a botched assassination/bombing attempt on a Saudi Arabian ambassador on US soil to the list of Iran's unforgivable sins. Some Syrians (allegedly either mercenaries or "freedom fighters," whatever) tried to wreak havoc in our AO once or twice with their sniper rifles, but they didn't last long. My team is definitely on the winning side in that body count. Based on recent video footage, Syrian gunmen seem to be better shots when they aim at their own people. Is there anything we as individual Americans can do, or refrain from doing, in our daily lives to make sure we do not support these nations?
- Konstantin
October 12, 2011 at 4:29am
Grow your own food, or if not that, shop at the nearest farmer's market. Walk to the market, or if too far, ride public transportation. Use solar power, but do not expose yourself to so much sun that you contract cancer. Learn Farsi and Arabic, and communicate in a positive way with the Muslims in your neighborhood. Sign up for the 100-year Star Ship Project to ship out to another solar system: http://www.space.com/11200-nasa-100-year-starship-interstellar-travel.html On the other hand, perhaps we can persuade Iran to set out for the next solar system so they can convert the alien infidels and subject them to sharia law.
- skahn
October 12, 2011 at 9:04am
Konstantin: I am going to make an assumption and then ask you some ignorant questions. I appreciate your patience with me in both regards. 1. Assumption: you served with the US military. Iraq? Afghaistan? Comment: I appreciate your service in serving our country. 2. Questions. I don't know what EFP, COP, and MRAP mean, though I am guessing they refer to destructive weapons. Thank you if you have the time and opportunity to explain.
- skahn
October 12, 2011 at 9:14am
Thank you, skahn. I look forward to being unfrozen from my cryogenic coma someday so we can be neighbors in a different solar system. COP: Combat Outpost, like a FOB but usually smaller & shabbier & more organic to the environment MRAP: Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, weighs about 26 tons, the more spacious but less mobile alternative to the humvee EFP: Explosively Formed Penetrator, a type of weapon, an evolved IED that can be camouflaged in roadside dirt mounds and directed at the passenger-level height of passing vehicles, proof that humanity is capable of evil
- Konstantin
October 12, 2011 at 4:27pm
I'm assuming that on the 100-year star ship project the attractive young women will be sleeping with the middle-aged male academics? You know, to keep the human race going out there in the cosmos. No? Oh.
- ironyroad
October 12, 2011 at 7:54pm
skahn might be onto something here, sending the Iranian government forth, to do what no man has done before! We could un-mothball the shuttle?
- Sophia
October 12, 2011 at 9:12pm
I appreciate everyone's riff on my interstellar theme. However, unless DUNE somehow fits the theme (being many decades since I immersed my immature mind in that science fiction version of Proust or Joyce or something akin), I am not sure anyone has developed the theme of an Islamic Interstellar empire. Somehow, or other, though the details have long since fled my mind, I do remember reading science fiction variations of Yiddish literature, which perhaps better fits TNR. As I type this, I am trying to imagine a solar system inhabited entirely by writers, readers, bloggers, and comment posters of TNR. I have no artistic talent, but I am trying to visualize Analog/Astounding science fiction magazine covers illustrating serials set in this solar system. Or would it be a Tolkien universe? [I strongly suspect one of the reasons I am not a religious believer is that I read so much science fiction as a child. Instead of taking me to the synagogue my father passed his copies of Astounding and Organic Gardening to me. My parents seemed to worship J. I. Rodale more than Jehovah, but this perhaps does not ring anyone else's memory bell here.
- skahn
October 12, 2011 at 9:16pm
Sophia, by a miracle of time travel or dimension travel or some such, we posted at about the same time. Watch out for the cosmic rays. Sophia, as I do not have any idea of what you look like, please forgive me if I visualize you as a Sigourney Weaver fighting off monsters in Aliens.
- skahn
October 12, 2011 at 9:20pm
It's about time we send the Marines into Tehran, capture Ahmedinejad, and let his people put him on trial and hang him by the neck until he is dead. Liberals would whine, squeal, howl and wet their nickers. So what - that's what liberal do. Normal Americans, like decent people everywhere, would be delighted.
- bulbman1066
October 13, 2011 at 12:24am
The k is silent, as in knickers.
- ironyroad
October 13, 2011 at 2:15am