Today, two days before the anniversary of the first protests against the rigged presidential elections in Iran, STOP THE BOMB activists protested against economic ties with the Iranian regime at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce’s Day of Export. At the Tehran Foreign Trade Office’s booth, they confronted Austrian commercial attaché Michael Friedl as well as businesspeople interested in trading with Iran with their criticism. During these discussions representatives of the Chamber of Commerce admitted that a contact with the Revolutionary Guards – who by now control large segments of the Iranian foreign trade – within the Austrian trade with Iran could not be ruled out.

STOP THE BOMB activist Barbad Farahani is outraged by the fact that Austrian enterprises continue to do business with the regime: "Last year’s developments at the latest should have brought home to everyone the inhumanity of Iranian regime. Directly or indirectly, Austrian enterprises trading with Iran fund the nuclear and missile programme as well as the population’s brutal repression, and most of all they strengthen the Revolutionary Guards’ power. In its efforts to intensify trade with Iran, the Chamber of Commerce stabs the Iranian freedom movement in the back." 

STOP THE BOMB spokeswoman Simone Dinah Hartmann places her criticism of the Chamber of Commerce within the broader context of the international efforts for sanctions: "The sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council are a first step, but they fall well short of what is needed for making the Iranian regime’s nuclear programme and continued repression of the Iranian people impossible. This goal can only be reached if the European countries, still being the regime’s most important trade partner, immediately impose severe and comprehensive sanctions. The Chamber of Commerce’s activities, however, are going right in the opposite direction."