Germany has various ways of promoting its interests around the world. When the government in Berlin wants to bypass constraints on its policy, one of the means at its disposal for doing so is "political foundations." Every party in the Bundestag has such a foundation. The Christian Democrats have the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Alliance 90/The Greens have Heinrich Böll, the radical Left party has the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and so on and so forth. The main objective of these foundations is "political education" both inside and outside Germany. It in this manner that these foundations, which are funded by the offices of the federal government, unofficially serve German foreign policy.
The Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, which has close ties to the Social Democratic Party of Germany – a member of the coalition government in Berlin charged with among other things, the Foreign Ministry – recently organized a public debate on Europe-Iran ties. Among the speakers at the event, which marked one year to Washington's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, were speakers from Iran, like Professor Hassan Ahmadian from Tehran University and Saeed Khatibzadeh from the Institute for Political and International Studies, which functions as an arm of Iran's Foreign Ministry.
The Institute for Political and International Studies made headlines in 2006 when it organized an international exhibition of cartoons mocking the Holocaust. The decision by a political foundation with close ties to the German foreign minister's party to invite a representative of this institute sparked sharp criticism from Iranian exile organizations as well as Jewish groups. It also led U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to try and convince the heads of the Social Democratic Party to rescind the invitation. But his efforts were in vain: The social democrats, it seems, don't like allies interfering with their plans.
In response to the criticism, the heads of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation explained that all of IPIS' top leadership had been replaced following the election of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, and the previous heads of the institute had resigned in protest over the exhibition. Furthermore, the foundation heads explained, the discussion was planned in the spirit of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, whose New Eastern Policy led to a calming of tensions in the Cold War in the 1970s and created an openness on the communist side that led to the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Now, too, the foundation heads insisted, they were seeking to create a stage for dialogue that would prevent radicalization and confrontation in a time of political crisis.
But the "critical" dialogue taking place in Berlin was, in fact, a European-Iranian monologue on the need to save the nuclear deal, and as a result, the ayatollah regime. Ever since then, the Europeans have never gotten anything since they began to engage in "critical dialogue" with the Iranians in the 1990s; all they have done so far is enable Tehran to promote its armament and nuclear programs. It seems that the significance of this "critical dialogue" can be summarized as nothing more than an opportunity for Iranians and Europeans to come together and criticize the United States.
And with all due respect to Brandt's diplomatic contribution, it was U.S. President Ronald Reagan, with his determination to eradicate what he perceived as the greatest threat to the West, that ultimately led to the disintegration of the Eastern bloc. Were it not for the arms race he initiated – which led to the economic and political collapse of the former Soviet Union – history may have turned out differently.
With his simple and clear distinction between right and wrong, U.S. President Donald Trump sees himself as Reagan's successor. Trump has selected a different path to bring about Iran's economic collapse, in order to force the regime in Tehran to change its policies and abandon its grip on power. By now, the Germans should have learned which path is the most effective path when dealing with threatening dictatorships, especially if they don't want the situation to deteriorate to the point that it escalates into an armed conflict. More than any other country, Germany should have joined Trump's efforts against the Iranian regime.
