Germany ordered the closure of all three Iranian Consulates in the country on Thursday in response to the execution of Iranian German prisoner Jamshid Sharmahd, who lived in the United States and was kidnapped in 2020 by Iranian security forces.
Sharmahd, 69, was put to death in Iran on Monday on terrorism charges, the Iranian judiciary said. That followed a 2023 trial that Germany, the US and international rights groups dismissed as a sham.
The decision to close the Iranian Consulates in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, announced by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, leaves Iran with only its embassy in Berlin, The Associated Press reported.
The German Foreign Ministry had already summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires on Tuesday to protest against Sharmahd’s execution. German Ambassador Markus Potzel also protested to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, before being recalled to Berlin for consultations.
Sharmahd was one of several Iranian dissidents abroad in recent years either tricked or kidnapped back to Iran as Tehran began lashing out after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers including Germany.
Iran accused Sharmahd, who lived in Glendora, California, of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people — including five women and a child — and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.
Iran also accused Sharmahd of “disclosing classified information” on missile sites of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during a television program in 2017.
His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed.
Iran pushed back against Germany’s protests. Araghchi wrote Tuesday on social network X that “a German passport does not provide impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal.”
He accused Baerbock of “gaslighting” and wrote that “your government is accomplice in the ongoing Israeli genocide.” Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and has sharply criticized Iranian attacks on Israel as tensions spiral over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The closure of consulates, a diplomatic tool Germany seldom uses, signals a major downgrade to diplomatic relations Baerbock said were “already at more than a low point.” Last year, Berlin told Russia to close four of the five consulates it then had in Germany after Moscow set a limit for the number of staff at the German Embassy and related bodies in Russia.
Iran's government “knows above all the language of blackmail, threat and violence,” Baerbock said Thursday. “The latest comments by the Iranian foreign minister, in which he puts the cold-blooded murder of Jamshid Sharmahd in the context of German support for Israel, also speak for themselves.”
“We repeatedly made unmistakably clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen would have serious consequences,” said Baerbock, adding that the cases of Germans held in Iran were a “central part” of a meeting she held with Araghchi in New York a month ago.
She said Berlin will continue with “tireless work” to get an unspecified number of other Germans released.
