European efforts to launch a payments channel to facilitate trade with Iran suffered a fresh setback on Thursday when the German former diplomat who was set to take over as the new chief of Instex was forced to pull out at the last moment.
The move by Bernd Erbel, 72, a former ambassador to Tehran, followed revelations in the German daily Bild of a recent YouTube interview in which the designated Instex chief voiced sympathy for Iran along with pointed criticism of Israel.
Among other things, he said that Israel was “more than ever an alien body” in the Middle East. He also described the fall of Saddam Hussein as the “greatest tragedy of the early 21st century”.
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