Germany summons Iranian ambassador over alleged spying on Jews
'We will not tolerate any threats to Jewish life in Germany,' the foreign ministry posted on X on Tuesday announcing the summoning of the envoy, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi.
It said the allegations against the suspect arrested in Denmark, a Danish national identified only as Ali S in line with German privacy rules, must be 'thoroughly investigated'.
The man was arrested in the eastern Danish city of Aarhus last Thursday, German federal prosecutors said earlier, 'strongly suspected of having worked for an intelligence service of a foreign power'.
'In early 2025, Ali S received an order from an Iranian intelligence service to collect information on Jewish localities and specific Jewish individuals in Berlin,' the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement.
He allegedly spied on three properties last month 'presumably in preparation of further intelligence activities in Germany, possibly including terrorist attacks on Jewish targets'.
After his extradition from Denmark, the suspect will be brought before an
investigating judge at Germany's federal court of justice, the prosecutor's office said, adding that the case against him was based on findings by the German domestic intelligence service.
Foreign minister Johann Wadephul, speaking after visiting a synagogue on a trip to Odesa, was quoted by German media as saying that, if confirmed, the case 'would once again demonstrate that Iran is a threat to Jews all over the world'.
Justice minister Stefanie Hubig condemned what appeared to be an 'outrageous operation', adding in a statement that 'the protection of Jewish life has the highest priority for the German government'.
German news outlet Der Spiegel said Ali S had photographed buildings including the headquarters of the German-Israeli Society in Berlin, which fosters cultural and scientific cooperation between the two nations, and a site where the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, is said to occasionally stay.
Ali S has Afghan roots and is believed to have been working for the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Der Spiegel said.
Schuster described the arrest as a 'final signal to all those who still play down the hate and annihilation fantasies of the mullah regime against Israel and Jews around the world'.
The Iranian embassy in Berlin rejected the allegations as 'unfounded and dangerous accusations' that it said appeared designed to distract from Israel's recent attacks on Iran.
Germany has stepped up already tight security at Jewish sites across the country since the Hamas attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023.
Last September, police in Munich shot dead a man armed with a rifle after an exchange of fire near the Israeli consulate. Investigators said they believed the suspect had been planning a terrorist attack against the site.
During last month's 12-day war between Iran and Israel, Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz, a staunch supporter of Israel, said the country was prepared for possible Iranian attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets on German soil.
Germany's relations with Iran have been historically tense although it is one of three European powers engaged in diplomacy with Tehran over its nuclear programme.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Europe is scrambling to form a united front and regain relevance in the Iran crisis
Exposed as divided and marginalised during the Iran crisis, European nations are scrambling to retrieve a place at the Middle East negotiating table, fearing an impulsive Donald Trump has diminishing interest in stabilising Iran or the wider region now that he believes he has achieved his key objective of wiping out Tehran's nuclear programme. On Tuesday the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was the latest senior European figure to phone the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offering to be a facilitator and urging Tehran not to leave the crisis in a dangerous limbo by keeping UN weapons inspectors out of Iran. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has even broken a three-year silence to speak to Vladimir Putin about the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, including how a deal could be struck between Iran and the US on a restricted civil nuclear programme. Macron has been involved in Iranian diplomacy for a decade and came close to engineering a rapprochement between Trump and the then Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, at the UN general assembly in 2018. But faced with what Iran regards as craven European support for Israeli and American airstrikes that have left more than 930 people killed and as many as 5,000 injured, Tehran is not placing much faith in the continent's ability to influence the White House. For Europe, this signals a slow slide into irrelevance. The three major European powers known as the E3 – France, Germany and the UK – were once key fixtures in Iran's diplomacy and played a central role in brokering the Iran nuclear deal which they signed alongside the EU, the US, China, Russia and Iran in 2015. Europe had little input in the US's recent negotiating strategy with Iran led by Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and was given just over an hour's official warning before the Israeli and US attacks. The one meeting that the E3 foreign minsters held during the crisis with Iranian diplomats in Geneva on 20 June proved a failure and was followed by the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. France claimed to have helped Israel repel Iranian drones. Trump crowed afterwards that 'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one.' From the Iranian perspective, Europe has long been a disappointing negotiating partner, repeatedly failing to show any independence from the US. When Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in 2018, the E3 condemned the move in a joint statement issued by their then-leaders, Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Macron. But they did nothing effective to pursue an independent strategy to lift European sanctions on Iran as they had promised. The fear that European firms trading with Iran would be sanctioned by the US was too great. The view from Tehran, it was felt, was that Europe's timidity left it with no choice but to follow the policy of nuclear brinkmanship, including gradually increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium. At the start of Trump's second term, the E3 plus Kallas tried again to insert themselves into the process by holding three low-key meetings with Iranian negotiators. But Araghchi was always angling to speak to Washington, telling the Guardian of his discussions with the Europeans: 'Perhaps we are talking to the wrong people.' After Trump signalled he was willing to speak to Iran bilaterally and showed some flexibility about Tehran's right to enrich uranium, Iran cast Europe aside. Iran believes Europe played a role either through naivety or complicity in opening the door for the Israeli attack by tabling a motion of censure at the board of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such motions have been passed before at the IAEA and usually led to Iran retaliating by increasing its stocks of enriched uranium. But the 12 June motion was different – for the first time in 20 years the board found Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Europe had to take this step if it is to use its right as a signatory to the 2015 deal to reimpose sanctions on Iran before the deal expires on 15 October. Due to the way the deal was negotiated, neither Russia nor China can veto Europe reimposing sanctions. America is no longer party to the deal so this power to reintroduce UN sanctions is Europe's diplomatic re-entry point into the Iranian file. European diplomats insist that the IAEA censure motion was necessary, that they had no option due to Iran's mounting stocks of highly enriched uranium that had no possible purpose in a civilian nuclear programme. Europe also still hoped the talks between the US and Iran, mediated by Oman, would bear fruit, and had not foreseen the US giving the green light for Israel to attack. Since the Israeli strikes, European unity has frayed further. Britain has largely opted for opacity, but it was clear from what ministers did not say that the government's legal advice was that the Israeli attack could not be justified as an act of self-defence under the UN charter. France openly asserted that the attack was unlawful. By contrast, Germany endorsed all that Israel has done. At the G7 summit in mid-June, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said: 'This is the dirty work that Israel is doing, for all of us.' Germany's foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, told parliament that 'Israel has the right to defend itself and protect its people. Let me say clearly that, if Israel and the US have now managed to set back the Iranian nuclear programme, it will make Israel and its neighbourhood more secure.' Asked by the newspaper Die Zeit if he believed Israel's actions were lawful, he said Germany did not have the same quality intelligence sources as the US and Israel, but he had to trust their belief that Iran was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. 'They told us that, from their perspective, this is necessary – and we must accept that.' Such remarks have left Iranian diplomats spitting about European double standards over the sanctity of international law. By contrast, Enrique Mora, the EU's point person on Iran from 2015 to early 2025, has written a scathing piece in which he says Israel has killed nuclear diplomacy and Iran's nuclear knowledge cannot be destroyed. He wrote: 'If Iran now chooses the militarization of its nuclear capabilities, if it now decides to move toward a bomb, it will do so following a clear strategic logic: no one bombs the capital of a nuclear-armed country. June 21, 2025, may go down in history not as the day the Iranian nuclear programme was destroyed, but as the day a nuclear Iran was irreversibly born.' There are different strategies Europe can pursue. It can, like Germany, show Iran there is no daylight between the E3 and Israel and assert that Iran can only have a civil nuclear programme that excludes domestic enrichment of uranium. It can press ahead with the reimposition of sanctions and hope that Iran buckles. The alternative is for Europe to champion a compromise that Tehran can wear. In a recent statement, the European Council on Foreign Relations said 'maximalist demands on Iran – including negotiating over missiles now viewed by Tehran as its main deterrence umbrella – will likely push the country to use every means still available to reach nuclear breakout. A more viable endgame would involve a return of wide scale inspections by international monitors and an immediate, substantial roll-back of Iranian uranium enrichment. The goal should be Iran pursuing this enrichment through a regional consortium backed by the United States.' That is broadly closer to the French position. Europe will never hold sway like Israel or the US, but it has one last chance to help create something durable, and prevent the Iranian crisis becoming a nuclear proliferation crisis for the whole region.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Tariffs, geopolitics drag on European IPOs, even as funds flow in
LONDON/FRANKFURT, July 4 (Reuters) - Tariffs and Middle East turmoil are spooking European companies and the investors weighing their initial public offerings even as volatility subsides and money flows back into equity markets, advisers told Reuters. President Donald Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs targeting imports from nearly all U.S. trading partners in April and his subsequent U-turn pause on the levies sent shockwaves through the global economy. But markets, including those in Europe, have since bounced back. The VIX, Wall Street's "fear gauge", has fallen around 67% from a peak touched following Trump's tariff announcement. And fund inflows into European stocks reached their second-highest level this century earlier this year. Still, investors remain wary of new listings. Topping their list of concerns, according to seven IPO advisers interviewed by Reuters, are the potential impact of conflicts like the Israel-Iran war and uncertainty regarding newly listed companies' aftermarket performance. "There's still a bit of nervousness in the network and a hangover from issues around tariffs and the war in the Middle East," said Scott McCubbin, head of EY's UK and Ireland IPO practice. Some companies, meanwhile, are unwilling to accept lower valuations than they had hoped for, the advisers said. German medical technology firm Brainlab postponed its IPO this week, citing "geopolitical uncertainties". Pharmaceutical company Stada delayed its debut in March, citing market volatility, while another German firm, car parts seller Autodoc did the same last month without giving a reason. Glencore-backed metals investor Cobalt Holdings, which was planning London's biggest IPO of 2025, meanwhile failed to secure enough investor interest, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters previously. Cobalt Holdings declined to comment. The recent run of shelved listings is making things harder for firms attempting to reopen the IPO market, one person close to the Brainlab IPO process said. Investors could not agree a price for the offering with Brainlab, the person and a second source said. Existing shareholders were dissatisfied with the makeup of the order book, said one of the sources, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was private. A spokesperson for Brainlab said interest from investors was "very strong" but the conditions were not optimal for an IPO. While more funds have flowed into European equities this year from investors seeking to reduce their exposure to U.S. assets, that money is going into the stocks of large companies rather than IPOs, said one equity capital markets banker. Some of the reticence stems from cases like German perfume retailer Douglas ( opens new tab, which saw its shares drop more than 12% on its listing debut. It subsequently cut its guidance this year. The number of companies that went public across the EMEA region in the first six months of this year fell to 44 from 59 in the same period last year, according to Dealogic data. The amount raised also fell sharply, to around $5.5 billion from $14.1 billion. In such a challenging environment, Naveen Mittel, head of equity capital markets syndicate for EMEA at Citi, said companies planning an IPO have little margin for error. "You need to be clean in terms of setup and structure, evaluation of price, and there needs to be no question marks around it," he said. There have been some success stories this year. Hacksaw ( opens new tab, a developer and distributor of online betting games, successfully listed on Nasdaq Stockholm in June. "It's hard to draw any firm conclusions from a few deals when others like Hacksaw, are still getting away," said Michael Jacobs, a partner at law firm Herbert Smith Freehills. "But it does feel like the IPO window needs a summer break to reset." Advisers are hoping an array of bigger deals may help open the market in the second half. That could include a return of Stada, and possible listings of prosthetic manufacturer Ottobock, Deutsche Boerse's ( opens new tab research and technology unit ISS Stoxx, and classifieds business Swiss Marketplace Group. Stada is evaluating all options for the further ownership of the company including a possible IPO, it said. Swiss Marketplace Group said it had recently taken initial steps to achieve a "high level of IPO readiness", but its shareholders had not yet made a decision on the possible timing of a float. And Ottobock said it is continually reviewing options including an IPO, but no decision has been made. Deutsche Boerse said it was considering an IPO of ISS Stoxx, but could also buy out private equity investor General Atlantic from the company. No decision had yet been made, it added. Despite the bleak year-to-date numbers, the big picture for European IPOs - positive funds inflows and a calming of market volatility - looks good, one equity capital markets banker said. "The candidates in the pipeline all have next to no tariff impact, so we are optimistic that after the summer the IPO gates will open," the banker said.
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Inside Iran's notorious Evin Prison - as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians
It is one of the most notorious and secret places in Iran. Somewhere foreign journalists are never allowed to visit or film. The prison where dissidents and critics of Iran's government disappear - some never to be seen again. But we went there today, invited by Iranian authorities eager to show the damage done there by Israel. Evin Prison was hit by Israeli airstrikes the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran. The damage is much greater than thought at the time. We walked through what's left of its gates, now a mass of rubble and twisted metal, among just a handful of foreign news media allowed in. A few hundred yards in, we were shown a building Iranians say was the prison's hospital. Behind iron bars, every one of the building's windows had been blown in. Medical equipment and hospital beds had been ripped apart and shredded. It felt eerie being somewhere normally shut off to the outside world. On the hill above us, untouched by the airstrikes, the buildings where inmates are incarcerated in reportedly horrific conditions, ominous watch towers silhouetted against the sky. Evin felt rundown and neglected. There was something ineffably sad and oppressive about the atmosphere as we wandered through the compound. The Iranians had their reasons to bring us here. The authorities say at least 71 people were killed in the air strikes, some of them inmates, but also visiting family members. Iran says this is evidence that Israel was not just targeting military or nuclear sites but civilian locations too. But the press visit highlighted the prison's notoriety too. Iran's critics and human rights groups say Evin is synonymous with the brutal oppression of political prisoners and opponents, and its practice of hostage diplomacy too. British dual nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe were held here for years before being released in 2022 in exchange for concessions from the UK. Interviewed about the Israeli airstrikes at the time, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe showed only characteristic empathy with her former fellow inmates. Trapped in their cells, she said they must have been terrified. The Israelis have not fully explained why they put Evin on their target list, but on the same day, the Israeli military said it was "attacking regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran". The locus of their strikes were the prison's two entrances. If they were trying to enable a jailbreak, they failed. No one is reported to have escaped, several inmates are thought to have died. The breaches the Israeli missiles made in the jail's perimeter are being closed again quickly. We filmed as a team of masons worked to shut off the outside world again, brick by brick.
