Germany and Iran

Why has the international community failed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability? Why is Germany, even today, the mullahs' biggest trading partner in the West? What underpins the strange friendship between Germany and Iran that goes back to the beginning of the last century and has survived every war, catastrophe, and revolution? Matthias Küntzel's Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold helps us to answer these questions. By unearthing new evidence from the National Archives in Washington, DC, and the German Foreign Office Archives in Berlin, Küntzel reveals that there has always been a hidden dispute between the White House and the German government over how to tackle Iran, and this dispute has deep historical roots. In this fascinating study, Küntzel shows how, during the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm was acclaimed Hajj Wilhelm Muhammad by Shiite clerics, and later how Adolf Hitler was celebrated as the Twelfth Imam. As Küntzel carefully documents, the now 35-year-old special relationship between Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran is critical to understanding the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear program.