German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently claimed at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Germany has always called for transparency and cooperation with Iran, but unfortunately Iran has not responded. Merkel also made it clear that her government will pursue unilateral economic sanctions in case China blocks an otherwise unanimous Security Council plan for more sanctions against Iran.1
However, Jens Nagel, Managing Director of the Federation of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade (BGA), believes unilateral German sanctions against Iran to be totally incomprehensible because they will open Germany's lucrative slice of the Iranian market to Asian and European competitors. According to BGA President Anton F. Boerner, Germany could be the biggest loser of a unilateral sanction policy against Iran because it could lead to the loss of 10,000 German jobs, in mostly medium-sized German companies, many of them family-owned businesses which depend heavily on trade with Iran. 2
