Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Germany steps up pressure on Iran with maglev feasibility study

Still doggedly determined to keep Teheran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and painfully aware of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated Holocaust denials and open threats to Israel, Berlin is stepping up its pressure on the ayatollahs yet again, this time by threatening to deprive them of countless tons of mullah moolah once it begins selling them its high-speed magnetic levitation train technology.



In a stunningly sly move on the ever-changing (not) Iranian crisis chess board, Germany has somehow managed to trick Teheran into commissioning a German engineering company to conduct a feasibility study for building a Transrapid train route linking the Iranian capital with the northeastern holy city of Mashhad. It appears that the Iranians are sick and tired of their own traditional and completely unreliable Persian maglev technology (they call it magic levitation or “flying carpet” technology, however) and Teheran may finally be prepared to knuckle under and become Germany’s Middle Eastern business buddy numero uno without ever once budging one bity little centimeter on any of its controversial policies.

“Old ideas like placing economic sanctions against Iran are out,” said a spokesman for the company doing the study. “Primarily because nobody here ever got around to placing any, of course. This new method is much more clever, however. By depriving Iran of one of it’s most precious natural resources, oil money, they have less and we get more, get it?”

Government spokesmen in Berlin have yet to commit directly on the issue, saying merely that the project is “in the very early stages. We haven’t even given them our bank account numbers yet.”

Wandel durch Annäherung.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:45:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (9) |
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1 - Considering that this is a civilian project that will help the Iranian people in the long run, where's the problem? Besides, American firms aren't averse to making a buck with dodgy regimes either. Maglev is actually something the Americans should be looking into as well - see your previous post on gas prices. (Comment this)

Written by: letters at 2007/05/30 - 11:11:17
2 - A hundred years ago we already built the railway from Istanbul to Baghdad. What a continuity in german-arabian relations :) (Comment this)

Written by: Zyme at 2007/05/30 - 11:41:16
3 - letters, it isn't a problem, provided Germany finally quits pretending to care about Iran's nuclear program. And even that's not a problem, genau genommen, it's just good old-fashioned hypocrisy. (Comment this)

Written by: Clarsonimus at 2007/05/30 - 11:42:47 in reply to: 1
4 - It is always interesting to me to see the role that mathematics has played in the history of mankind. Apparently the equation that morality is inversely proportional to monetary profit is still a truism. The German Government under Kaiser Wilhelm II did not suffer any significant ethical dilemmas during the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway during the First World War which enabled the genocide carried out against the Armenians. IBM, Ford Motors and GM did not hesitate to do business with Hitler during the 1930s and 1940s as long as a profit was to be made. Certainly the flow of Reichsmarks and foreign capital out of Germany did not dissuade the Nazis from their criminal intent. Have the Germans considered the potential military uses that Maglev techology will offer the Iranians in terms of deployment of supplies and military personnel? I doubt it. (Comment this)

Written by: Dennis L. at 2007/05/30 - 13:56:47
5 - Let's not forget Microsoft and Yahoo in China now that we're on this bent speaking freely via the Internet. China? Human rights? Fortune 500's never heard of them. As Dennis L points out, there are examples everywhere. Why single out the Germans in Iran? Let he who lives in a glass house make sure it's double-glazed.
 (Comment this)

Written by: letters at 2007/05/30 - 14:53:14
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