The German government said on Thursday that it was closing three Iranian consulates in response to Iran’s execution this week of a German-Iranian dual citizen, which Germany’s foreign minister called an “assassination,” as tensions grow between the West and Tehran.
“We have repeatedly made it unmistakably clear to Tehran that the execution of a German national will have serious consequences,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said as she announced the closing of the consulates in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. Ms. Baerbock, speaking in New York, noted that she recently discussed the case directly with Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister.
The execution of Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, came as war rages between Israel and Iran-backed forces Hezbollah and Hamas, conflicts that have led Iran and Israel to launch the most serious strikes against each other in a long history of hostility. Western countries have tried to keep the conflict from escalating into a full-fledged war between Iran and Israel.
“The fact that the assassination has now taken place in light of the latest developments in the Middle East shows that a dictatorial regime of injustice like that of the mullahs does not act following normal diplomatic logic,” Ms. Baerbock added.
Shutting down multiple consulates is rare and shows how seriously Germany has taken the execution. The only other time Germany has closed so many consulates of a single country was last year, when it shut five of Russia’s six consulates after Russia expelled several German diplomatic staff members.
On Monday, the Iranian government announced that it had executed Mr. Sharmahd, who it claimed helped orchestrate a deadly terrorist bombing in the Iranian city of Shiraz in 2008. Mr. Sharmahd, who had been living in the United States, was abducted while visiting Dubai in 2020 and taken to Tehran, according to his family. There he was convicted in what human rights organizations and the German government called a show trial.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany expressed outrage on Monday that Mr. Sharmahd had never been able to defend himself in court. “The execution of Jamshid Sharmahd by the Iranian regime is a scandal that I condemn in the strongest possible terms,” he said in a statement on Monday.
Born in Tehran, Mr. Sharmahd moved to Germany with his father at the age of 7 and received German citizenship in 1995. Germany’s foreign ministry, which has in the past negotiated prisoner swaps with Iran, tried to help free Mr. Sharmahd for years but failed. When the death sentence was announced in 2023, the German government sent two Iranian diplomats home in protest.
After the execution on Monday, the German foreign ministry announced that it had summoned a top official in the Iranian embassy in Berlin to protest, and had directed its ambassador in Tehran to lodge a formal complaint directly with the Iranian foreign minister.
Gazelle Sharmahd, Mr. Sharmahd’s daughter, lambasted the failed efforts of both the German foreign ministry and the U.S. State Department to free her father. She also demanded proof of her father’s death. Posting on social media early on Tuesday, she wrote: “Did they once again take the word of the lying jihadists? We deserve proof!”
From California, where he lived at the time he was seized and taken to Iran, Mr. Sharmahd ran the website of a little-known group known as Tondar. He recorded videos claiming that the group was arming people to fight against Iran. The group, which has taken responsibility for attacks in Iran, is committed to overthrowing the government in Tehran and restoring the monarchy.
The estimated 300,000 Iranian nationals living in Germany will now have to be served by the Iranian embassy in Berlin, which remains open.
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