RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Emily Harris reports.
EMILY HARRIS: Chancellor Merkel's foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen says she'll repeat that message in Texas.
CHRISTOPH HEUSGEN: We should not allow to have a situation where the Iranians can just point and say, well, it's actually just the Europe and the U.S. that are against us. All the rest is behind us and we are defending the rest of the world against Europe and the U.S.
HARRIS: Germany is at the moment not on board with that proposal.
MARK FITZPATRICK: Well, Germany is of two minds.
HARRIS: Mark Fitzpatrick is a former U.S. diplomat specializing in nonproliferation. He's now at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.
FITZPATRICK: Germany places a great value on European common foreign policy, and so it is willing to go along with the British and the French. But the Germans have commercial interests that are a little bit different.
HARRIS: Still, Karsten Voigt, Berlins point man on U.S. relations says bringing up the trade issue reflects a mood in the U.S. he doesn't like.
KARSTEN VOIGT: The mood is that the Germany is soft on Iran. This is a perception which is not based on reality. We Germans agree with the U.S. more on Iran than many other European countries.
HARRIS: Klaus Friedrich(ph) with the German Association of Industrial Equipment Manufacturers, VDMA, says if European companies pull out, others will simply go in.
KLAUS FRIEDRICH: We can see it in all volumes that the business of Asian companies - Korea or Japan and specifically in China - increased in the last year in the machinery sector. And, of course, if we do not have United Nation sanctions, they may fill the holes and they will fill the gaps European companies are producing.
HARRIS: But Liz Martins(ph), head of Mideast Coverage for Business Monitor International, says Iran's economy is protected by oil exports.
LIZ MARTINS: We don't see a huge decline. We don't see the - a huge decline in revenues. I mean, you'd have to be out of your mind to put sanctions on oil exports with, you know, oil prices nearly hundred dollars a barrel. We don't think that's going to happen.
HARRIS: Emily Harris, NPR News, Berlin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
