BERLIN (AP) — 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 U.S. 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 against 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 Sharmahd of “disclosing classified information” on missile sites of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard during a television program in 2017.
His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed.
Iran pushed back against Germany’s protests. Araghchi wrote Tuesday on social network X that “a German passport does not provide impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal.”
He accused Baerbock of “gaslighting” and wrote that “your government is accomplice in the ongoing Israeli genocide.” Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and has sharply criticized Iranian attacks on Israel as tensions spiral over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The closure of consulates, a diplomatic tool Germany seldom uses, signals a major downgrade to diplomatic relations Baerbock said were “already at more than a low point.” Last year, Berlin told Russia to close four of the five consulates it then had in Germany after Moscow set a limit for the number of staff at the German Embassy and related bodies in Russia.
Iran's government “knows above all the language of blackmail, threat and violence,” Baerbock said Thursday. “The latest comments by the Iranian foreign minister, in which he puts the cold-blooded murder of Jamshid Sharmahd in the context of German support for Israel, also speak for themselves.”
“We repeatedly made unmistakably clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen would have serious consequences,” said Baerbock, adding that the cases of Germans held in Iran were a “central part” of a meeting she held with Araghchi in New York a month ago.
She said Berlin will continue with “tireless work” to get an unspecified number of other Germans released.
On Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “the execution of a European citizen is seriously harming relations between Iran and the European Union.”
“In view of this appalling development, the European Union will now consider targeted and significant measures,” he said in a statement, without elaborating.
Baerbock noted that the EU imposed a new set of sanctions in mid-October and that she is pushing for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be put on a list of terror organizations.
Sharmahd had been in Dubai in 2020, trying to travel to India for a business deal involving his software company. He hoped to get a connecting flight despite the coronavirus pandemic disrupting global travel.
Sharmahd’s family received their last message from him on July 28, 2020. It’s unclear how the abduction happened, but tracking data showed that Sharmahd’s cellphone traveled south from Dubai to the city of Al Ain on July 29, crossing the border into Oman. On July 30, tracking data showed the phone traveled to the Omani port city of Sohar, where the signal stopped.
Two days later, Iran announced it had captured Sharmahd in a “complex operation.” The Intelligence Ministry published a photograph of him blindfolded.
Germany expelled two Iranian diplomats last year over Sharmahd’s death sentence.
Geir Moulson, The Associated Press