GERMAN OFFICIALS ARE AUTHORIZING A HIGH NUMBER OF SENSITIVE TE CHNOLOGIES FOR EXPORT.(Main)

Byline: STEVE COLL Washington Post

As Iran rebuilds its civilian infrastructure and rearms its military with the help of Western investment and technology, Tehran is turning increasingly to Germany, where government officials are currently approving 80 percent of applications by German companies seeking to export sensitive civilian high-technologies to Iran.

Despite tough new export control laws, adopted after embarrassing revelations that German companies sent deadly technologies to Iraq and Libya during the late 1980s, Germany has in the last three years become the single largest exporter to Iran. The trade has been bolstered by German government policy that has resulted in approval of a sizeable majority of Iranian export license applications, according to interviews with German officials who cited unpublished government export data.

These officials argued that a new system of export controls ensures that …