A scandal is shaping in Germany over alleged weapons smuggling to Iran, which threatens the survival of the German foreign minister.New claims say the European country is home to some 100 arms-smuggling shell companies that funnel restricted technologies, such as night-vision equipment, missile technology, and F-14 Tomcat parts, to Iran.
President of the Federal Customs OfficeKarl-Heinz Matthia claims:
"We're talking about companies made up one to three persons who don't necessarily produce anything themselves but rather order something from the producers and then conceal where the stuff is going."
A TV report, which alleged that the German government has known about these companies since 2002, sparked a buzz across the country, with the obvious question being: If the government has been aware of these firms for four years, then why did the previous government allow them to operate so freely?
The as-yet-unspoken answer is that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government did not mind allowing things to happen that annoyed Washington.
Johannes Schmalzl, president of Germany's Office for the protection of the Constitution in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, told the program 'Report Mainz' that the German authorities were having difficulty tracking the scale of the illegal exports by front-companies.
Iran has been sending agents on shopping trips to Europe and to Germany, in order to improve the reach and precision of their missiles, it was reported.
Most of the Iranian spies disguised the arms exports through a maze of small trade firms and distribution points, both within Iran and abroad. Such networks served to mislead the authorities and facilitate the illegal exports, according to the German authorities.
German firms' involvement in illegal arms exports is not confined to Iran alone. Since the 1980s, German firms and middlemen, along with counterparts in other European countries, have been suspected of smuggling nuclear technology to regimes in Pakistan and North Korea.
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