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DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Iran Germany Israel Intelligence

Iran exacts a price for this friendship

“Two German diplomats using fictitious names of Yogi and Ingo were arrested” last month during clashes at the Ashura festival, an unnamed Iranian deputy intelligence minister said Wednesday, Jan. 27.

The announcement followed shortly after Israeli president Shimon Peres told the Reichstag in Berlin that he was sure Germany would come to Israel’s aid if it came under attack from a nuclear-armed Iran.
A day earlier, Chancellor Angela Merkel standing alongside the Israeli president said time was up for Iran and February would see new and tougher UN Security Council sanctions.

These events marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
debkafile reports that, in keeping with its new rapid strike policy for any hostile US or Israeli action – developed in conjunction with Syria and Hizballah and first exposed by debkafile file on Jan. 26 – Tehran hit back at Berlin Wednesday. Iranian state television quoted a top official as accusing “two diplomats using fictitious names” of a hand in organizing the Ashura riots in which at least eight people died.
The report which hinted at the two having worked under cover for German BND intelligence, did not say whether they were still in detention.
In Berlin, foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said he was unaware of any German diplomats having been detained in Iran and rejected any Berlin involvement in the protests.

The Iranian deputy intelligence minister was also quoted as reporting that a close advisor of main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was arrested and made “confessions.”

He said: “Available evidence and this person’s confessions show that he was connected through a point man to the intelligence service of a European country and was releasing confidential information.”
A few days after the Shiite commemoration, Iranian officials revealed they had detained a Swedish diplomat for 24 hours on the day of Ashura.

Iran’s purported detention of two German diplomats or agents would spark a major crisis between the two countries, recalling the rupture of the mid-90s when Iranian covert agents were arrested in Germany.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Joint German-Israeli government session

Israel’s president, prime minister and foreign minister are visiting Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest this week, apparently impervious to the European Union foreign ministers’ decision in Brussels Monday, Jan. 25, to back away from sanctions for Iran’s nuclear program outside the UN Security Council.

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle signed off on the motion, the day before Israeli president Shimon Peres’ Hebrew address to the German parliament in Berlin.
debkafile: The Netanyahu government clings to the anchor of supposed international sanctions for halting Iran’s advance on a nuclear weapon. Monday, before traveling to Poland, prime minister Netanyahu said at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum:  “Today there are new Jew haters with new reasons to destroy the Jewish people. This is a test for humanity, and we will see in the coming weeks how the international community will stop the evil before it spreads.”
Well, he had his answer than same afternoon, yet this eloquence vanished on the plane trips to Europe.
None of the Israeli travelers have commented on the decision by the European foreign ministers to dump the sanctions option in the laps of Russia and China, knowing their vetoes are committed in advance and that both stand out for more diplomatic engagement plus concessions to Tehran.  The EU foreign ministers stated: “With Iran, [sanctions] will work out only if all the UN Security Council permanent members agree.” Every one of those ministers was fully aware that this proposition was a fantasy.

If Israel counted on Washington staying the course, there too there are signs of cold feet. The Obama has reduced the target of possible unilateral measures to the Revolutionary Guards Corps which is responsible for Iran’s nuclear program, in order to avoid harming the Iranian people.

As debkafile has stressed before, the Revolutionary Guards have umpteen mostly criminal ways of beating sanctions: They run a vast network of straw companies worldwide and move money around through international crime, smuggling, terror and drug conduits out of America’s reach rather than the banking system.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi are undoubtedly Israel’s best friends on the European continent, but they too conduct a dual policy on Iran. They sternly denounce Iran, while at the same time hundreds of German and Italian companies do business with the Islamic Republic, some even selling components for its missile and nuclear programs. Indeed, German and Italian firms are in tight competition over the Iranian market, with the latter reportedly gaining the edge this year.
No German transaction with Iran has been cancelled under Israeli pressure contrary to reports to this effect.
The most realistic European leader is French president Nicolas Sarkozy who Tuesday, Jan. 26, called for new and different steps to be pursued to halt Iran’s dash for a nuclear bomb. Still, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner did not hold out against his colleagues consensus in Brussels.

AFP: Iran leader predicts destruction of Israel.

Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran

Iran leader predicts destruction of Israel

(AFP) – 4 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is confident Islamic nations will one day watch the destruction of arch-foe Israel, his website Wednesday quoted him as saying.

Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran, the website said.

The all-powerful Iranian leader also said that Israel’s continued “pressure to erase Palestine from the world of Islamic nations” will fail.

“Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime… when the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue,” Khamenei told Aziz, who arrived in Tehran on Monday.

“The Zionist regime, by continuing to use pressure, blockades and committing genocide, wants to erase Palestine… but it will not succeed.”

Praising Mauritania for cutting its ties with Israel, Khamenei said the “Zionist regime is a great danger to the world of Islam as it was thinking of expanding its influence and grip on the region every day.”

Iranian officials, including Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have earned the wrath of Israel and Western powers for their repeated anti-Israel comments.

Relations between the two nations have deteriorated particularly under Ahmadinejad who has often said that Israel is “doomed to be wiped off the map” and has termed the Holocaust a “myth”.

Israel shut down its embassy in Nouakchott following Mauritania’s decision in January 2009 to suspend diplomatic ties with the Jewish state a decade after they were launched.

Mauritania was one of only three Arab nations that had formal diplomatic ties with Israel, apart from Egypt and Jordan.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.