Foreign relations “experts” such as Niels Annen think they’re winning hearts and minds by pandering to this criminal regime. In reality, they’re just being played for fools.
“US Ambassador Grenell blasts Germany for celebrating Iranian Islamic Revolution anniversary,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News, February 14, 2019:
Germany’s foreign ministry has been slammed by the U.S. ambassador after it emerged diplomats in Berlin celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, a regime which seeks the destruction of the United States and Israel.
Niels Annen, a minister of state in Germany’s foreign ministry, and an official from the Iran desk at the ministry attended the pro-mullah regime event at the Iranian embassy in Berlin earlier this week, according to Bild newspaper.
“No one should confuse the desire to have dialogue with a celebration marking 40 years of brutality. This sends a troubling mixed message,” Richard Grenell, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, told Fox News.
A spokeswoman for Germany’s foreign ministry defended Annen’s appearance at the celebration in a statement to Fox News, saying Germany wishes to keep “channels of dialogue” open.
After Annen’s participation in honoring the Iranian regime’s revolution, he traveled to Warsaw, Poland, to represent Germany at a U.S.-sponsored meeting on the Middle East called to stop Iranian jingoism in the region. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that the international community “can’t achieve peace and security” in the Middle East without first “confronting Iran.”
Also speaking from Warsaw, Vice President Mike Pence urged the European Union to withdraw from the controversial Iran nuclear agreement. Last year, the Trump administration pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal, because the agreement failed to stop Iran’s drive to develop a nuclear weapon, according to the U.S.
Germany along with France and the United Kingdom is leading the E.U. effort to evade tough U.S. sanctions against Iran’s regime. Pence said the E.U.’s mechanism to circumvent U.S. sanctions was “an effort to break American sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.”
“It is an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more distance between Europe and the United States,” Pence added….