The decades-long conflict between the United States and Iran seems to be headed toward escalation. The American announcement that aircraft carriers and B-52 bombers have been deployed, along with reports of plans to post 120,000 troops to the Middle East, has put the region on high alert. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s statement that Iran will no longer abide by all of the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement (JPOAC) that it signed with the United States and five other world powers signals that the crippling sanctions have forced the Iranians’ hand. Indeed, Iran has issued an ultimatum that without economic progress in 60 days, it will cease adhering to the limits of enrichment. This move would arguably bring Iran closer to nuclear capability. Iran’s message, however, should not come as a surprise. The strict limits of the nuclear agreement were only agreed to in exchange for economic relief, which came to a halt through the United States’ imposition of various new punitive sanctions on Iran. Additionally, the special purpose entity Instex (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), set up by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to assist Iran in legally bypassing U.S. trade sanctions, has not yet had the desired impact. Despite the willingness of European nations to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran, the U.S. sanctions have succeeded in choking off the Iranian economy. This effective assault on the Iranian economy has taken away the clearest incentive for Iran to continue to fully comply with the nuclear agreement and has increased the chances of military confrontation.
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The following paper was presented at the Seventh Annual Telos Conference, held on February 15–17, 2013, in New York City. This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City. |
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An often referred to occasion when discussing Iran’s[1] relation to Nazi Germany is the 1939 establishment of a scientific German library consisting of 7,500 books in Tehran. The books were a gift from Nazi Germany as a building block in a continuing collaboration between Iran and Germany. This Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, as it was called, contained a variety of selections ranging from the works of the great German philosophers to books of technological nature. More telling than the choice of books provided is the preface to the library catalog ordered by one of the Nazi’s chief racial ideologues, Alfred Rosenberg. In this text he writes: “National Socialist Germany is consciously devoted to the facilitation of Aryan culture and history and sees in Iran’s efforts a striving towards mutual goals, that are to further the spiritual affinity of both nations” (Vorwort, DWB).[2] This “spiritual affinity” (geistige Verwandschaft) has to be viewed as part of a continuation of successful German cultural work or Kulturarbeit in Iran, which is precisely what needs to be explored to understand how this point was reached. However, we need to look at a part of Germany’s robust cultural efforts in the earlier decades of the 1900s, especially throughout the First World War, to allow us to better comprehend the roots of this spiritual alliance between Germany and Iran. 
German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time (1927), constitutes one of the most important contributions to philosophy of the last century. Beyond having a defining influence on numerous fields of study within philosophy that include but are not limited to existentialism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction, Heidegger has often been viewed as “the most creative religious writer of the twentieth century” (Ireton, 243). It should thus not be surprising that his ideas were widely received and regarded by Iranian intellectuals and students before (and after) the Iranian Revolution of 1979. One of the main seeds of Heideggerian thought that blossomed particularly well in the Iranian context was his notion of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit). Used by Heidegger to draw ontological distinctions, authenticity inspired a politicized discourse—among its Iranian readers—on a return to an “authentic” self. The authenticity of the Iranian return to the self firmly grounded on a separation from imposed Western ideals. A tendency among Iranians toward the study of existentialism[1] in addition to Heidegger’s poignant critique of a decadent West cloaked in religious terminology made him an excellent partner to a group of Iranian intellectuals unsatisfied with a despotic monarch perceived to be antagonistic to Islam. 
In 2004 the German national football team was invited to Azadi Stadium in Teheran for a friendly game against Iran’s national team. While the German anthem was being played before the game, a large number of Iranians collectively greeted their German guests by performing the Nazi salute. Although this display of naiveté came as a shock to millions of viewers on live German TV, it should not come as a surprise in light of Nazi Germany’s historical propagandist involvement in Iran. Whereas the history of the relations between the two nations dates back to 1873, an affinity was reinforced in the Weimar years and strengthened through the propagation of an Aryan myth during the Nazi reign. I will discuss two pivotal historical associations between Germany and Iran, one based on the Aryan myth grounded in racist ideology, the other connection concerns intellectual influences of German anti-modernists on Iranian thinkers. Both points serve to shed light on a relationship that demands awareness, especially now that tensions between the West and Iran are continuously increasing. 
