Tehran’s agents are said to be accredited as diplomats in Germany and other European countries, namely through the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Berlin. A willing helper in recruiting new supporters of the mullah ideology is the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) with its so-called Blue Mosque.
Security authorities consider the IZH and the Blue Mosque to be a hub for the Iranian regime’s activities in Germany and Europe. The German federal government and the parties behind it also see it as being where the intimidation of the exile opposition is organized. Investigators recently increased the pressure. Last November, officers raided the center, which has been calling for its closure for years. But the IZH has still not been closed.
However, given the escalated conflict between Israel and Iran, the pressure is now growing again. There is great concern that Iran’s agents in Germany could take action against Jewish institutions or representatives. “This is one of the reasons why there can no longer be any space for the IZH in our city. I hope that the Federal Ministry of the Interior’s ban proceedings will now be brought to a quick and successful conclusion,” said the Social Democratic Interior Minister of Germany’s second largest city.
The Greens are also demanding consequences from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). “Also and especially in light of the current developments, I expect that all constitutional means will be exhausted immediately in order to finally ban the IZH and supporting structures and to prevent any Islamist activities,” says the deputy leader of the Greens in the German Parliament and chairman of the Parliamentary Control Committee of the Secret Services. Impatience in the Bundestag is growing across all factions because the Union, SPD, Greens and FDP called for the center to be closed in a motion for a resolution immediately after the Hamas attack on Israel in October. The Interior Minister reacts to such criticism and says that the investigations against the IZH are being carried out with high priority. But it is obviously not easy to obtain a court decision. Evidence is still being examined intensively, and the outcome is still considered open in investigator circles.
Another case shows how active the Iranian regime has long been away from the center in Germany and which obscure helpers have a hand in it. In December, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court sentenced the 36-year-old German-Iranian Babak J. to a prison sentence of two years and nine months for an arson attack in Bochum (case number: 6 StS 1/23). The written reasons for the judgment have recently been available – and they are quite something. Because it proves in black and white that the government in Tehran was involved in an attack. The Senate is “convinced based on an overall view of the findings” that the perpetrator “received the order to carry out the attack on the synagogue (…) from an Iranian state agency,” the decision says. The attack with an incendiary device in Bochum, which hit a school and targeted a synagogue in November 2022, is now seen as a turning point in the diplomatic struggle for new sanctions. The European Union is currently examining whether the ruling could serve as a basis for outlawing the elite unit of the Iranian military as a terrorist organization. The reaction options would then be significantly greater.
Exiled Iranians have long feared the long arms of the mullahs’ regime Above all, the circumstances of the crime enable a deep look into the clandestine control from Iran. The order for the crime was given by a former member of the Hells Angels rocker gang who was wanted on an arrest warrant in Germany for murder and attempted murder and who had fled to Iran. The time of the crime, the crime scene, and even the modalities of execution were specified by the former Hells Angel who once lived in Germany. He is said to have monitored the crime intensively. The goal: to create uncertainty among the German population with an arson attack on the synagogue in Bochum. The plan didn’t work, though. On November 17, 2022, the later convicted Babak J. actually took action, but got cold feet at the last minute. The perpetrator apparently threw the Molotov cocktail at a neighboring school because the synagogue was heavily guarded. With the case, however, the investigators learned a lot about the structures of influence. According to the court, the middleman from the rocker milieu was commissioned to carry out the attack on the synagogue by an Iranian state agency.
Tehran’s long arm has long been feared, especially among the Iranian opposition. Iranian activists in exile repeatedly report that they are harassed and intimidated by regime representatives. The security apparatus in Iran often puts family members under pressure and is threatened with arbitrary arrests. After nationwide protests began in Iran following the death of Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa at a police station in Tehran, Iranians living in Germany reported increased surveillance by Iranian agents. Some of them are supposedly accredited as diplomats in Germany and other European countries. At that time, the German security authorities received information from foreign partners about the entry of Iranians who, according to their findings, belonged to the regime’s security apparatus.
The clearest evidence that Iran does not shy away from violence against opponents of the regime is the case of Asadollah A. He was accredited as a diplomat at the embassy in Vienna. A court in Antwerp sentenced him to 20 years in prison for a foiled bomb attack on a large rally of exiled Iranian opposition members in France in 2018. The judges ruled that Assadollah A. was responsible for the plan to attack the National Resistance Council event in Villepinte near Paris with thousands of participants with an explosive device. It was the first time since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 that a government official in the EU was tried and convicted of terrorism.
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