Iran: Expert says ‘tensions are very high right now’

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The EU is sending the Deputy Foreign Representative Enrique Mora to the inauguration of the new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Thursday. However, Amnesty International criticised the fact that in 2019, as chairman of the Iranian Judges’ Commission, Mr Raiso was also responsible for hundreds of arrests, torture and executions.

Joachim Kuhs, budget policy spokesman for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) delegation in the EU Parliament and member of the AfD’s federal board, voiced his outrage over the move.

He said in the European Parliament: “While the Iranian people take to the streets to protest against the radical Islamic regime, Brussels supports the unjust regime.

“According to the financial transparency portal, the EU has made 60 million euros available to Iran over the past five years.

“With this and with their visit, they are sending a fatal signal to the regime in Tehran, to the Iranian opposition and to the world, and is complicit in death, torture and arbitrary arrests in Iran.”

Israel also strongly condemned the EU’s plan to send Mr Mora to the inauguration.

Lior Haiat, spokesperson of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “The decision of the European Union to send a senior representative to the swearing-in ceremony of the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ is puzzling and shows poor judgment.”

He then said the “EU participation gives legitimacy to the Iranian attack and the policy of aggression” of the Iranian government.

He then added: “We strongly recommend the EU to immediately cancel their shameful participation in the inauguration ceremony of the butcher of Tehran.”

It comes after NATO and the EU on Tuesday condemned Iran’s alleged attack on a merchant ship in the Arabian Sea.

Last Thursday’s drone strike on the MV Mercer Street killed a British national and a Romanian.

It was the first known fatal strike on commercial shipping in the region after years of tensions over the tattered nuclear deal between western nations and Iran

European Commission spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said: “Such acts contrary to the security and freedom of navigation in the region are unacceptable.

“All parties concerned must avoid all actions that could undermine peace and regional stability.”

Writers Alireza Nader and Benjamin Weinthal said in July “The EU is only too happy to appease Iran” for a new nuclear deal in an article for The Dispatch.

Talks in Vienna to revive the Iran nuclear deal have stalled with no date scheduled for a next round.

The pair said: “The EU has decided to ignore the regime’s human rights violations and regional expansionism, its support for terrorism and development of conventional military capabilities like long-range ballistic missiles, to focus solely on a new Iran nuclear agreement.

“Simply, the Europeans want a deal so they can invest in Iran again and reap the rewards, including lucrative contracts for European energy companies.

“Since the turn of this century, the EU and its members, especially the E3 (France, the U.K., and Germany), base most of their interactions with and their policies on Iran on the ill-fated Iran nuclear deal.

“Germany’s former foreign minister Joschka Fischer was wedded to a narrow Iran atomic deal strategy in 2003 that relied on carrots rather sticks.

“Almost two decades later, European officials still seem eager to court Iranian officials.”

Additional reporting from Monika Pallenberg

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