Germany orders the closure of 3 Iranian consulates after a German Iranian prisoner is executed

BERLIN (AP) — Germany ordered the closure of all three Iranian consulates in the country Thursday in response to the execution of German Iranian prisoner Jamshid Sharmahdwho 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, Iranian justice said. This followed a 2023 trial that Germany, the US and international human 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.

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 to attack after the collapse its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers including Germany.

Iran charged Sharmahd, who lived in Glendora, California, of planning an attack in 2008 at a mosque that killed 14 people — including five women and a child — and injured more than 200 others, as well as plotting other attacks through the Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its militant wing Tondar.

Iran also accused Sharmahd of “revealing classified information” on the missile sites of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard during a 2017 television program.

His family contested the charges and worked for years to see him released.

Iran rejected Germany’s protests. Araghchi wrote on social network X on Tuesday that “a German passport does not give impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal.”

He accused Baerbock of “gassing” and wrote that “your government is complicit 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 rarely uses, signals a major downgrade in already tenuous diplomatic relations. Last year, Berlin told Russia to shut up four of the five consulates it then had in Germany, after Moscow set a limit on the number of staff at the German Embassy and related bodies in Russia.

On Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said “the execution of a European citizen seriously damages 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.

Sharmahd was in Dubai in 2020 trying to travel to India for business involving his software company. He hoped to get a connecting flight despite the coronavirus pandemic disrupting global travel.

Sharmahd’s family received the last message from him on July 28, 2020. It is unclear how the kidnapping took place, but tracking data showed that Sharmahd’s mobile phone traveled south from Dubai to the city of Al Ain on the 29 July, crossing the border into Oman. On July 30, tracking data showed the phone traveled to the port city of Sohar in Oman, where the signal stopped.

Two days later, Iran announced that it had captured Sharmahd in a “complex operation”. The Ministry of Information published a photo of him blindfolded.

Germany expelled two Iranian diplomats last year because of Sharmahd’s death sentence.