Iran tries to murder a German public figure. Berlin stay silent.
Dear Reader,
Europe has grown accustomed to foreign autocrats settling their feuds on its streets.
In 2019, a Russian hitman cycled into Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park and shot a former Chechen rebel in broad daylight. The German government later handed him back to Moscow as part of a deal to free a US journalist whom the Kremlin had taken captive.
Iran has long harassed dissidents across Europe. China operates networks that monitor regime critics abroad. Turkey uses biker gangs to intimidate and assault opponents. Even Vietnam was so unconcerned about the potential diplomatic blowback that it kidnapped an exiled businessman from a Berlin park in 2017 and smuggled him out of the country.
These cases all shared one characteristic: the targets were exiles, dissidents or figures directly tied to conflicts in their countries of origin.
Last week, however, German federal prosecutors outlined allegations that, if true, mark a new level of audacity in the measures a dictatorship is prepared to take to suppress opposition: the attempted targeting not of exiled opponents, but of prominent figures within German public life itself.
On Thursday, the Federal Prosecution Service announced charges against two men accused of acting on behalf of Iran’s Quds Force. According to the charge sheet, the pair conducted surveillance on Volker Beck, the president of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, and Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Both men have been vocal critics of Iran’s religious leadership and staunch supporters of Tehran’s chief nemesis, Israel.
Prosecutors say the suspects were in the process of hiring a hitman to murder Beck when they were arrested last year. The charges include spying for a foreign state and attempted murder.
A former Green Bundestag member, Beck is one of Germany’s best-known pro-Israel campaigners and a highly recognisable figure in Berlin politics. Schuster, meanwhile, is effectively the most senior representative of organised Jewish life in Germany.
If the allegations are true, the implications are far-reaching.
European states have often proved unable or unwilling to stop foreign powers from carrying their conflicts onto our streets. But this case represents something different: the alleged attempt to eliminate central figures in Germany’s domestic debate on Middle East policy. Until now, plotting the murder of figures within the country’s political life was a Rubicon no foreign state had crossed.
The fact that Tehran even contemplated it suggests it did not fear serious consequences if the crime were traced back to its door.
Given the reaction we have seen from Berlin since the charges were announced, such an assumption would not have been far off the mark.
When the suspects were first arrested last year on vague charges of threatening Jewish targets, Germany’s justice minister described the allegation that Tehran was involved as “outrageous”.
Now, despite the accusations involving planned attacks on high-profile public figures, there have been no diplomatic consequences. One might have expected, at the very least, Berlin to summon the Iranian ambassador. Far from it: neither Chancellor Friedrich Merz nor Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has even commented on the case. The national debate has also been remarkably subdued. Beyond coverage in the Jüdische Allgemeine and a handful of opinion pieces elsewhere, there has been little wider discussion about how Germany should respond.
What explains the lack of outrage?
It is quite possible that Germany is playing down the affair out of desperation to find a diplomatic solution to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Merz clearly believes the US-Israeli war against Iran was a catastrophic error. Speaking last month, he complained that the United States had “no strategy” and was being “humiliated” by the “very skilful negotiators” in Tehran. Possibly, he fears that turning the assassination plot against Beck into a major confrontation would only make the ayatollahs more stubborn in their reluctance to reopen shipping lanes.
It certainly would not be the first time the chancellery has ignored charges announced by the federal prosecution service because of their explosive geopolitical implications. Despite prosecutors issuing arrest warrants for several Ukrainians they say blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, Germany has largely brushed aside the act of sabotage for the sake of maintaining unity among allies.
If Germany is deliberately downplaying the Iranian assassination plot, however, it raises questions about whether its oft-repeated commitment to Jewish security as a central tenet of Germany’s Staatsräson is truly unconditional, or whether it plays second fiddle to realpolitik.
An even less charitable explanation is that the muted public reaction has something to do with who the targets were.
Under different circumstances, a Russian plot to assassinate pro-Ukraine figures such as Roderich Kiesewetter or Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann would likely have triggered a major international scandal, with Berlin taking the matter to the United Nations.
Beck and Schuster have been similarly unequivocal in their support for Israel, strongly condemning European attempts to sanction Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its conduct of the war in Gaza. Yet attitudes towards Israel inside Germany have become markedly more ambivalent as the conflict has dragged on. After the October 7th massacres, solidarity with Israel was widespread. But over time, many people have come to see the fighting less through the lens of their own history and more as a bloody ethnic conflict in a faraway land.
Figures such as Beck, who are still as supportive of Israel now as they were on October 8th, 2023, are increasingly isolated. That should have no bearing on how Germany responds to another state’s alleged plan to assassinate him. In reality, however, it has likely contributed to the lack of pressure for a firm response.
The most generous interpretation is that the plot was uncovered at such an early stage that few genuinely believe Iran was capable of carrying out such an audacious attack. Perhaps people have become so accustomed to Tehran’s shenanigans that even a murder plot of this magnitude no longer shocks them. Whether that degree of complacency justifies such a limited reaction is another matter.
Whatever the explanation, Germany should think more deeply about what this murder plot represents.
For years, Berlin responded weakly as authoritarian states pursued dissidents and exiles on its streets. Every timid reaction has encouraged autocrats to attempt more daring acts of subterfuge. Much like Berlin’s reluctance to contemplate military action to secure the Strait of Hormuz until after the crisis had effectively been settled diplomatically, the absence of a firm response makes it harder for Germany to defend its own interests on the world stage.