Iran tries to murder a German public figure. Berlin stays 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…