Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Report: German intelligence captured Iran Quds’ Force spy

Russia, China, Iran and Turkey are “key players in espionage and influence directed against Germany,” according to a report.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 17, 2019. Credit: Balk/MSC via Wikimedia Commons.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 17, 2019. Credit: Balk/MSC via Wikimedia Commons.

German authorities apprehended a suspected spy for Iran’s terrorist Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a review of the new Federal Intelligence Service report released by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s interior minister.

“In February 2019, the Federal Criminal Police Office carried out an executive measure against a person in Hesse [Germany] who was suspected of deploying intelligence activities in the Federal Republic of Germany on behalf of the Quds Force. The investigation is ongoing,” the report said, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Russia, China, Iran and Turkey are “key players in espionage and influence directed against Germany,” the report said.

The United States has designated the Quds Force a terrorist organization, although Germany has not done so.

This comes after a German intelligence service document released in June stated that Iran remains intent on obtaining nuclear weapons.

According to a section of the 181-page Baden-Württemberg state intelligence agency document titled “Proliferation,” Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and Syria are “still pursuing” nuclear-weapons technology, Fox News had reported.

The promotion of one of the president’s most partisan and hard-nosed lieutenants to one of the most powerful jobs in Washington may signal how Trump intends to respond to his party’s defeat in the midterms.
“It’s an evolving trend that shows greater signs of permanence than temporary quality,” Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs told JNS.
The move comes amid a sharp increase in Holocaust denial and distortion around the globe following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
The Israeli diplomat drew parallels between Nazi and Soviet antisemitic propaganda.