“Tehran tried to kill the leader of the German Jewish community”. The verdict in Germany

There must be a list in Tehran of prominent European Jewish figures to be eliminated. A court in Hamburg has sentenced two men to eight years’ imprisonment for planning attacks against Jewish leaders in Germany on behalf of the Iranian secret services. Among the targets was Josef Schuster, the long-standing leader of the German Jewish community. Both men were found guilty of espionage and attempted murder. One of the defendants – a Danish national of Afghan origin – received orders directly from the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guards.

As well as targeting two prominent Jewish figures, the 54-year-old is also alleged to have planned an arson attack on a kosher food shop in Berlin.

One of the two had received orders in early 2025 from officers of the Quds Force and had travelled to Tehran specifically for that purpose. The German Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador yesterday following the convictions. It is the least a democracy can do when its citizens are singled out as targets by a foreign state apparatus. In addition to Schuster, according to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the defendants are also alleged to have plotted the assassination of Volker Beck at a McDonald’s in Denmark. Beck, who served as a Member of the Bundestag for the Greens until 2017, is now president of the German-Israeli Society. “The mullahs’ arm of terror reaches as far as Germany and Europe,” said Schuster, whose organisation represents the German Jewish community, comprising 125,000 people. “The German government should not merely remain vigilant, but should actively take political action against the Iranian regime.”

For decades, the Iranian regime has been instructing agents to carry out terrorist acts, including in Germany. In September 1992, Iranian agents murdered four Iranian politicians in exile inside a Greek restaurant in Berlin. In 2022, a German-Iranian national carried out an arson attack on a school, which was in fact intended to target an adjacent synagogue in Bochum. An Iraqi national has, meanwhile, been accused of coordinating attacks against Jewish targets in the Netherlands and of acting on the instructions of the Iranian regime. The individual is also involved in legal proceedings in the United States, where he is currently in custody. Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al Saadi, as he is known, is accused of orchestrating several explosions and an arson attack in the Netherlands. The alleged attacks include explosions targeting a Jewish school in Amsterdam and a synagogue in Rotterdam.

The French authorities, meanwhile, have charged a couple with involvement in Iranian-backed plots to assassinate Jews in Germany and France. Abdelkrim S. and his partner Sabrina B. were arrested as part of an investigation codenamed ‘Marco Polo’. In early October, two Iranians were charged in England in connection with an attack targeting the Jewish community in Manchester.

Rahman Salehi and Salam Ahmadyan are accused of obtaining materials and instructions for the manufacture of an explosive device, of identifying potential targets and of carrying out reconnaissance in preparation for an attack. A Norwegian teenager, found guilty of travelling to the UK to carry out a contract killing on behalf of Iran, was sentenced on Friday to twenty years’ imprisonment.

Johannes Kongsnes Natland was supposed to carry out an attack on a target (which remains unknown) in exchange for 25,000 euros. He was arrested at a hotel in Huddersfield, in the north of England, two days after his arrival in the United Kingdom, in possession of firearms and ammunition. If Agatha Christie was right in saying that one clue is a clue, two clues are a coincidence and three clues make a case, here the clues number in the dozens and all bear the same signature in the making.

Yet, in the West, people are turning a blind eye to the Iranian threat to Western democracies. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre published ‘The War on Western Minds: Iran’s 30-Year Campaign to Divide the West’. A report on how the Islamic Republic has placed anti-Semitism at the forefront of its ‘soft war’ against the West. Campaigns to recruit influencers and hitmen. One wonders how many other chains of command remain hidden and for how much longer Europe can afford to confuse diplomacy with negligence when it comes to Iran.