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 Dubai 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 the Islamic Republic with only its embassy in Berlin.

 

The German Foreign Ministry had already summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires on Tuesday to protest 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 Sharmahdof“disclosingclassified information” on missile sites of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard during a television programme in 2017. His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed. Iran pushed back against Germany’sprotests.Araghchi wroteTuesday onsocialnetworkXthat “a German passport does not provide impunitytoanyone,letalone a terrorist criminal.” He accused Baerbock of “gaslighting” and wrote that “yourGovernmentisaccomplice in the ongoing Israeli genocide.” Germany is a staunchallyofIsraelandhas sharply criticised Iranian attacks on Israel as tensions spiral over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.