Israel's Tehran connection

[bemildred]

Tsk.

Israel, while supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, is happily buying Iranian oil

If you've ever wondered about the definition of hypocrisy you'll find the answer right here.

Last month the Swiss foreign minister visited Iran and, together with President Ahmadinejad, attended the signing of a multi-billion euro contract for Iran to supply Switzerland with large amounts of natural gas over the next 25 years.

The US State Department immediately condemned the deal and said it would be investigating whether it breached the Iran Sanctions Act. Israel complained too, describing the Swiss minister's visit to Tehran as an "act unfriendly to Israel". Various Jewish groups also joined in the protests, including the World Jewish Congress.

This righteous indignation was entirely predictable but more than a little odd nevertheless. On March 30, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag retaliated with the revelation that Israel, supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, has been buying Iranian oil for years.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_silverstein/2008/04/israels_tehran_connection.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[oberliner]

2. Can we clarify some of the details here?

This story could use a bit of scrutiny.

Firstly, the so-called "revelation" alluded to in the headline supposedly comes from a Swiss newspaper called "Sonntag" (which means "Sunday" in German).

Most likely, this is referring to the Sunday edition of Mittelland Zeitung.

But, for some reason, rather than linking to the actual newspaper's website, this piece links to the website of Erhard Arendt, a graphic artist who apparently also posts articles that are of interest to him.

The author of this piece then says he was presented with a translation of that article by someone he identifies as "Israeli journalist Shraga Elam" - a person who, it ought to be mentioned, can be described as, at the very least, controversial. (Much of it stemming for his alleged letter of support to David Irving)

Clicking the "Shraga Elam" link in the article also returns you to the Arendt website.

There is then included a link to a website called EnergiaNews that is entirely in Hebrew.

I think it is rather brazen to claim that "Israel is happily buying Iranian oil" without examining the details of the story a bit more closely.

As it stands now, the evidence is based around a single piece available only in German, from a Swiss newspaper (citing an Energy newsletter published in Hebrew) that is reprinted on a personal blog site and translated by a third party.

You will note that the one Israeli who is actually mentioned in the Swiss/German article by name (the spokesman for Oil Refineries Ltd) denies that Israel is getting any oil from Iran.

And now this article itself has been rather widely disseminated across the internet (on some rather unsavory sites) in a very short amount of time.

One would think that if one wanted to claim that Israeli was happily buying Iranian oil that one would want to have a little more to go on than what was presented here.

[bemildred]

3. "Brazen" is hardly a strange thing down here.

It appears to me that the EnergiaNews site is the original source, so it would depend on a translation of the Hebrew there. The German language source references the Hebrew source, near as I can tell, and then reports on what various other mostly unnamed sources said. So the Hebrew source seems the critical one to me. Personally I find nothing strange in the idea that governments have the morals of a mink in heat.

It appears to me the main point of the piece, assuming one accepts all this, is the hypocrisy of violating your own embargo, leading to a criticism of the assertion that other parties ought not buy Iranian goods.