German companies can no longer rely on export and investment guarantees from the federal government when doing business with Iran.
In view of "the very serious situation in Iran", the Federal Ministry of Economics has suspended the foreign trade funding instruments and German-Iranian business formats.
As the ministry also announced on Friday in Berlin, this includes export credit and investment guarantees, the German-Iranian energy dialogue, the manager training program and the foreign trade fair program.
"Exceptions can only be permitted for reliable humanitarian reasons," it said.
According to the information, the assumption of export and investment guarantees for Iran was suspended for decades anyway.
Only since 2016, after the lifting of EU sanctions, among other things, has there been a brief phase in which these instruments were opened up.
In this opening phase, for example, guarantees were given or extended for a few projects with regard to investment guarantees.
Since the end of 2018, however, the federal government has not had any applications for new investment guarantees for a decision.
The same applies to export credit guarantees: the federal government assumed guarantees in 2017 and 2018, but not since 2019.
The Ministry of Economics, in consultation with the departments, has now decided to completely suspend the instruments mentioned.
The background is the violent action taken by Iranian security forces against demonstrators.
The trigger for the nationwide protests was the death of the Iranian Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini.
She died in police custody on September 16 after being arrested by the Morality Police for breaking the Islamic dress code.
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the German-Iranian trade volume in 2021 was 1.76 billion euros.
Between January and September of this year, it amounted to 1.49 billion euros.
Years ago, German companies still had high hopes for doing business with Iran.
In the course of US sanctions, however, the risk increased and companies withdrew on a large scale.