CNN reports that Iran has announced it has "cut off all trade ties with Denmark".
From a point of view of international trade law, there are two problems with this idea.
One is the fact that Denmark is an EU Member State. As such it is impossible for any third state to "cut off all trade ties" with Denmark. The EU acts as a block in international trade. Trade sanctions against individual Member States can't work. This is exactly one of the reasons to have an European Union in the first place.
The second is that this kind of attitude makes it kind of difficult to admit Iran into the WTO. According to the Wikipedia WTO page, Iran has applied for WTO membership since 1996. As far as I know, there is no clause in the WTO treaties that allows "cutting off all trade ties" because you don't agree with something a newspaper in another Member State published.
Any arab country already in the WTO (like Saudi Arabia) would face an immediate complaint by the EU over any boycott against Denmark. Trade commissioner Mandelson has warned that he would see government sponsorship of a boycott against Denmark as a very serious matter and a boycott of the EU as a whole, and that he would take the matter to the WTO.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at February 7, 2006 09:47 AM