Quds Force Indictment Lands as Berlin Recalibrates Iran Strategy

The Federal Prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe filed charges on Thursday against two men accused of working for Iran's Quds Force on a plot inside Germany. Ali S., a 54-year-old Danish national, faces charges of intelligence agency activity, sabotage-purpose agency activity, and attempted participation in murder and serious arson; his co-defendant, the 42-year-old Afghan national Tawab M., additionally faces attempted participation in murder. According to the indictment filed before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, Ali S. was ordered in early 2025 to surveil Volker Beck (chair of the German-Israeli Society and a former Green Bundestag member 1997-2017), Josef Schuster (president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany) and two Jewish-owned food retailers in Berlin; in May 2025 he recruited Tawab M. to procure a weapon for an unnamed third party. The lead came from Israel's Mossad. Beck used the day to demand the expulsion of Iran's ambassador and the freezing of the late Ali Khamenei family's German assets, telling Reuters he could not "even take out the garbage alone" during his summer 2025 police protection. The Conference of European Rabbis called for an EU-wide terror designation of the Revolutionary Guard. The indictment lands amid a wider Europe-wide pattern: the 10 April Munich Israeli-restaurant arson claimed by the obscure pro-Iranian group "Hayi," parallel claims in London, Antwerp, Liège and Amsterdam, and the recent US extradition from Turkey of the alleged Iraqi-Shia ringleader.

In the Bundestag, the Economic Committee's secret ballot for a deputy chair returned at least six votes for AfD candidate Malte Kaufmann from outside his parliamentary group — most plausibly, the Greens and the Left charged on Thursday, from the CDU. The AfD has no committee chairs or deputies under the cordon agreed by other parties; the CDU declined to identify the source of the votes, and the episode adds a domestic test of party discipline to a week the chancellery is already spending on the Middle East.

That chancellery spent Thursday on the Gulf. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul met counterparts from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, signalling Berlin's shift away from the mediator role it had attempted in the US-Iran conflict and toward a network of regional partners — a recalibration Chancellor Friedrich Merz has framed as recognition that German leverage in Washington has narrowed and that European interests in the Gulf require direct relationships.

In Helsingborg, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said many alliance members are still not contributing enough to Ukraine's defence, naming Sweden, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Greece and Latvia as the limited group leading the effort and urging the rest to step up; Rutte appeared alongside Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The remarks land at a moment when the United States is publicly recalibrating its NATO Force Model contribution and US General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has signalled a managed reduction of US troops in Europe beyond the roughly 5,000 already announced.