German state security sources on Wednesday accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of contracting state-sponsored terrorism against German synagogues in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and spying on the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
According to a report from the German TV station ARD political magazine Kontraste, security sources believe the German-Iranian Ramin Y. is behind the attacks. “We’re talking about state terrorism here,” one investigator told Kontraste.
The attacks involved a shooting, targeting a synagogue in Essen and a failed arson attack on a synagogue in Bochum.
The effort to burn a synagogue in Dortmund was also part of the attacks in November. The US government has classified the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization. Germany refuses to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The Jerusalem Post previously reported that the IRGC hired a Pakistani man to assassinate pro-Israel advocates in Germany and France.
The German TV Tagesschau reported that “according to the investigation, there is currently a threat against the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster. According to Kontraste information, the investigators have indications that the group around Ramin Y. wanted to spy on Schuster. The authorities should therefore assume an increased threat for Schuster.”
The Tagesschau added that “Ramin Y. is the founder of the Mönchengladbach branch of the rocker club Hells Angels and is wanted on an international arrest warrant for, among other things, a murder in the rocker milieu.
"The security authorities assume that Y. is in charge of an operational command for attacks in Germany for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”
The Tagesschau
Tagesschau reported that on the night of November 18, a 35-year-old German-Iranian was arrested in Dortmund. According to Kontraste information, he is said to have been in contact with Ramin Y.”
The article added that he “is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a school that is directly adjacent to the Bochum synagogue. He is also said to have tried to persuade another man to carry out an arson attack on the Dortmund synagogue. According to Kontraste information, he is said to have threatened the man if he did not cooperate. However, this man revealed himself as a witness to the police.”
Germany urged to end ties with Iran
Germany has faced mounting criticism to end partnerships with the Islamic Republic of Iran. German-Iranian dissidents urged the city of Hamburg to close the Iranian regime-controlled Islamic Center and Blue Mosque because they disseminate antisemitic and terrorist ideologies.
German Jews and German-Iranian dissidents are demanding that the mayor of Freiburg, Martin Horn, in southwestern Germany pull the plug on the city’s partnership with Isfahan in Iran.
Critics have blasted, Michael Blume, the antisemitism commissioner, tasked with fighting hatred of Israel, for refusing to urge Horn to end the partnership and condemn Isfahan’s genocidal antisemitism. The Iranian regime in Isfahan urges the destruction of Israel each year at its al-Quds Day event.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post that the "Iran regime murders its own citizens. The nuke-seeking, Holocaust-denying regime is now exposed directly attacking German Jewry. Not mere hate crimes but targeted terrorism. Will the German Chancellor now finally designate IRGC a terrorist entity?”