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German Intelligence Accuses Iranian Embassy of Spying on Opponents

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer leaves news conference in Berlin, Germany July 24, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer leaves news conference in Berlin, Germany July 24, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
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German Intelligence Accuses Iranian Embassy of Spying on Opponents

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer leaves news conference in Berlin, Germany July 24, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer leaves news conference in Berlin, Germany July 24, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

A report by Germany’s domestic intelligence service (BfV) revealed that Tehran is using the Iranian embassy in Berlin to spy on the Iranian opposition, and that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its arm for foreign operations, the Quds Force, were also active in the country.
 
This annual report, which was revealed by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, came a few weeks after Berlin arrested an Iranian diplomat working for the Austrian embassy and charged him with terrorism and giving instructions to Iranians in Belgium to carry out terrorist attacks against an opposition group in the European country.
 
Iranian diplomat Abdullah Asadi was arrested while in Bavaria, Germany, with a European arrest warrant. His trial in Germany began while Belgium was also demanding his extradition for trial on its territory.
 
The German intelligence report said spying operations in Germany were run by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, and that they gathered mainly information about dissidents in Germany, but their operations sometimes extended to other European countries.
 
On the Iranian Quds Force, the report said that its operations were mainly aimed at Israeli and Jewish targets. But the report said no concrete threat was identified against specific targets or people in Germany.
 
The report revealed that a Pakistani citizen was convicted by a Berlin court of spying for Iran in March last year and sentenced to 4 years and 3 months of imprisonment. According to the report, the convict had been in contact since 2011 with a member of the Quds Force in charge of intelligence operations in Europe.
 
German intelligence has revealed that Tehran was trying to influence Shiites of various nationalities living in Germany, through a number of centers and institutions it runs in the country. The report mentioned the Islamic Center in Hamburg, which follows the Imam Ali mosque in the same city.
 
BfV also cited the “ongoing threat” from Lebanon’s “Hezbollah,” saying: “We must expect Hezbollah to continue planning terrorist operations outside the Middle East against Israeli targets.”

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Iran Says Could Abandon Nuclear Weapons But Has Conditions

A sample of the surveillance cameras that monitor the Iranian nuclear facilities presented at a press conference in Vienna. (Reuters)
A sample of the surveillance cameras that monitor the Iranian nuclear facilities presented at a press conference in Vienna. (Reuters)
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Iran Says Could Abandon Nuclear Weapons But Has Conditions

A sample of the surveillance cameras that monitor the Iranian nuclear facilities presented at a press conference in Vienna. (Reuters)
A sample of the surveillance cameras that monitor the Iranian nuclear facilities presented at a press conference in Vienna. (Reuters)

Iran on Saturday hinted it would be willing to negotiate on a nuclear agreement with the upcoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump, but that it has conditions.
Last Thursday, the UN atomic watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution ordering Iran to urgently improve cooperation with the agency and requesting a “comprehensive” report aimed at pressuring Iran into fresh nuclear talks.
Ali Larijani, advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said Iran and the US are now in a new position concerning the nuclear file.
In a post on X, he said, “If the current US administration say they are only against Iran’s nuclear weapons, they must accept Iran’s conditions and provide compensation for the damages caused.”

He added, “The US should accept the necessary conditions... so that a new agreement can be reached.”
Larijani stated that Washington withdrew from the JCPOA, thus causing damage to Iran, adding that his country started increasing its production of 60% enriched uranium.
The Iran nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was reached to limit the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The deal began unraveling in 2018, when Washington, under Trump’s first administration, unilaterally withdrew from the accord and re-imposed a sanction regime of “maximum pressure” on Tehran.
In retaliation, Iran has rapidly ramped up its nuclear activities, including by increasing its stockpiles of enriched uranium to 60% — close to the 90% threshold required to develop a nuclear bomb.
It also began gradually rolling back some of its commitments by increasing its uranium stockpiles and enriching beyond the 3.67% purity -- enough for nuclear power stations -- permitted under the deal.
Since 2021, Tehran has significantly decreased its cooperation with the IAEA by deactivating surveillance devices to monitor the nuclear program and barring UN inspectors.
Most recently, Iran escalated its confrontations with the Agency by announcing it would launch a series of “new and advanced” centrifuges. Its move came in response to a resolution adopted by the United Nations nuclear watchdog that censures Tehran for what the agency called lack of cooperation.
Centrifuges are the machines that enrich uranium transformed into gas by rotating it at very high speed, increasing the proportion of fissile isotope material (U-235).
Shortly after the IAEA passed its resolution last Thursday, Tehran spoke about the “dual role” of IAEA’s chief, Raphael Grossi.
Chairman of the Iranian Parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Ebrahim Azizi said, “The statements made by Grossi in Tehran do not match his actions in Vienna.”
And contrary to the statements of Azizi, who denied his country’s plans to build nuclear weapons, Tehran did not originally want to freeze its uranium stockpile enriched to 60%
According to the IAEA’s definition, around 42 kg of uranium enriched to 60% is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible. The 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Spokesperson and deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said on Friday that IAEA inspectors were scheduled to come immediately after the meeting of the Board of Governors to evaluate Iran’s capacity, “with those capacities remaining for a month without any interruption in enrichment at 60% purity.”
Iran’s news agency, Tasnim, quoted Kamalvandi as saying that “the pressures resulting from the IAEA resolution are counterproductive, meaning that they increase our ability to enrich.”
He added: “Currently, not only have we not stopped enrichment, but we have orders to increase the speed, and we are gradually working on that."