Pressure is mounting on the largely pro-Iran regime mayor of the German city of Freiburg, Martin Horn, to dissolve his municipal partnership with the heavily militarized city of Isfahan in Iran that last week played a key role in the Islamic Republic’s massive aerial bombardment of the Jewish state.
Some Iranians in Isfahan celebrated the aerial bombardment targeting Israel last week.
Calls for Horn to end the twin city partnership grew after Iran’s regime fired over 300 missiles and suicide drones at Israel. Isfahan is the main hub of Iran’s missile production program and its illicit nuclear weapons apparatus.
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Jonathan Conricus, who served as the Israeli army's international spokesperson from 2017 to 2023, told the Jerusalem Post: "I find it odd that a city still has a connection to an official institution from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ending the partnership would send a message to the hostile Iranian regime that this city, like all German cities, adheres to German values."
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the world’s leading Nazi-hunter and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, told the Post that the twin city partnership “makes Freiburg looks a bunch of total idiots.” He said that “To have a twin city agreement with a city in Iran does not make any sense. It encourages Iran to continue to do what they are doing—spreading death and destruction.”
Zuroff stressed that “Freiburg is not in line with the general attitude in Germany.”
Addressing the Iranian people
Ben Sabti, who led the IDF Spokesperson’s platforms in Persian, which was created to address the Iranian people directly, told the Post that “Iranian drones were sent from Isfahan” to attack Israel.
Sabti, who was born in Tehran and is research fellow for Institute for National Security Studies, added that in Isfahan “There are many military bases” in Isfahan because it is in the heart of Ian and it is “very secure” for Iran to place military installations in the central province of Isfahan.
Israel, according to foreign media reports, on Friday launched a counter-strike against an air base in Isfahan and hit a key part of Iran's S-300 air defense system. The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Freiburg is widely considered one of the most hospitable European cities for Iran’s regime, which was classified as the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism by the Biden administration. Zuroff noted that Isfahan is the “center of nuclear weapons production” in Iran.
The campaign to end the reported appeasement of Iran’s regime by Freiburg’s mayor, Martin Horn, and the left-wing Green and Social Democratic parties in the city council has been largely led by Iranian dissidents.
Dr. Kazem Moussavi, a German-Iranian dissident who has campaigned against the partnerships since it was founded in 2000, told the Post “As an Iranian opposition activist and spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in Germany (in exile), I have been warning Freiburg's respective mayors, now Martin Horn, and the city council for years, in vain, that Freiburg's relations with Isfahan are dangerous and a back door for the mullahs to spread their antisemitism and Islamism in Baden-Württemberg and in all of Germany.”
Freiburg is a university town located in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Moussavi continued that “However, they paid no attention to my protests and reports in the context of appeasement policy. They ignored that Isfahan is an execution center for opponents of the regime, the main base for uranium enrichment to produce nuclear bombs, ballistic missiles and drones, and to equip the war against Israel. It has now been proven that the Revolutionary Guard from Isfahan fired ballistic missiles at Israel. If these rockets had hit Israeli cities, it would have been an even more terrible crime than the Hamas October pogrom, for which the city of Freiburg would also be morally responsible.”
The well-known German-Iranian activist added “ If Mayor Martin Horn and the Freiburg city councilors had reflected on these dangers and Israel's attack on military installations in Isfahan, they would have to resign immediately and break off Freiburg's relations with the city of Isfahan. This sister city partnership endangers Israel's security.”
Sheina Vojoudi, who is an associate fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, told the Post, “Isfahan is of great strategic importance in Iran. There are military and nuclear bases in Isfahan and it shows how the regime is concentrated in this city and the rockets that were fired at Israel were also fired from one of the bases in Isfahan. Today's attack on Isfahan means that this city is one of the main points where the regime can pose a threat to Israel and of course to the Iranian people because of the intense activities of the IRGC.”
Voujoudi, who fled the Islamic Republic to Germany, added “The regime's nuclear activities have almost ruined the lives of the people of Isfahan and increased the rate of cancer in Isfahan. Every nuclear activity of this regime, which is based on dangerous and deadly ideologies, is a warning sign for the whole world. After the rocket attacks on Israel from Isfahan, it's time for Freiburg to end its town twinning with Isfahan, and Jewish communities in Germany can play a key role in ending this partnership.”
Freiburg’s mayor and city government and its tiny Jewish community run by the controversial chairwoman, Irina Katz, declined to condemn Isfahan’s call to eradicate Israel in April. At a April demonstration held on Al-Quds day in Isfahan, the last Friday of Ramadan, the Imam of Isfahan, Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabainejad, declared, ”It is our obligation to support the oppressed Muslims who have been oppressed and we hope that, with divine providence in this path of resistance, we will be able to wipe the Zionist regime off the face of the earth.”
Katz took to the streets last year to protest Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s hotly debated effort to reform the judicial system. She has not called for the end of the Freiburg-Isfahan partnership.
The German state of Baden-Württemberg, where Freiburg is located, has enabled Iran’s chemical missile weapons program. In 2018, the Post reported the company Krempel, located in Baden-Württemberg, sold technology to Iranian regime businessmen that was later used in the production of chemical rockets that resulted in a Syrian regime gas attack on civilians. The chemical missile attack resulted in 21 injuries, including many children.
It is unclear if the Krempel technology was used in Iranian missiles fired at Israel.
The Green party governor of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, has permitted a flourishing trade relationship to exist between Iran’s regime and German banks and engineering companies in his state. The Post previously reported on Kretschmann’s financial support in the amount of $32,000 for an antisemitic Palestinian Christian pastor who supports BDS.
The Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper has urged civil society groups like the German-Israel Friendship Society in Stuttgart (DIG-Stuttgart) to call for the end of the partnership between Isfahan and Freiburg.
After weeks of mounting pressure on the DIG-Stuttgart, the group sent an email to the Post on Friday calling for the termination of the partnership. When asked if the DIG-Stuttgart will urge Mayor Frank Nopper of Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg, to delete information for the pro-Hamas group Palestine Stuttgart Committee on the city website, Oliver Vrankovic, the chairman of the DIG-Stuttgart, refused to comment.
The NGO Palestine Stuttgart Committee has raised funds for the Israel-designated terrorist organization Samidoun, which has an office in Iran. Germany classified Samidoun a terrorist entity after the October 7 massacre.
Susan Kaufmann, a spokeswoman for Stuttgart's mayor, told the Post that ”The state capital Stuttgart has reinstated the address of the Palestine Committee Stuttgart on the city's homepage in consideration of the legal position represented by the Stuttgart Administrative Court.”
German legal experts and pro-Israel advocates argue that Nopper is not serious about stopping the financing of Hamas and Samidoun because he could delete all NGO entries on the city’s website to ensure there is no financing of Palestinian terrorism.
When asked if Nopper would delete all NGO entries on the city’s website, Kaufmann refused to comment.
When asked if the DIG-Stuttgart will urge the Stuttgart-based bank LBBW to close the account of Palestine Stuttgart Committee, Vrankovic declined to comment. The DIG-Stuttgart and its national organization DIG are financed by the German foreign ministry. It is unclear why DIG-Stuttgart retains a dovish posture toward the financing and support of Hamas and Samidoun by Stuttgart and the state of Baden-Württemberg. Stuttgart and the state government reportedly own nearly 50% of the LBBW bank.
The LBBW bank is opposing the trend in Germany to counter alleged financing of pro-Palestinian terrorist organizations, in which banks have closed accounts of pro-Hamas groups. Last month, the Berlin Sparkasse bank suspended the account of the far-left and pro-Hamas group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” because of alleged ties with Palestinian terrorists and extremists.
In 2019, after a series of Post investigative reports on the bank account of the pro-BDS group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East,” the German Bank for Social Economy in Cologne closed the organization’s account.
In December, the Post reported Yesh Atid head MK Yair Lapid demanded German authorities disrupt and end Hamas funding streams in Germany. Lapid told German news organization Die Welt’s TV program that “there are people in Germany who have bank accounts, there are people who perhaps also personally support Hamas activists. And they are working on transferring money to Hamas.”
Mayor Horn and the Green and Social Democratic parties in Freiburg’s city council refused to answer numerous Post press queries. All of the major parties in the city council (with the exception of the tiny pro-Israel JUPI Party) and Mayor Horn have remained wedded to the partnership with Isfahan.
In 2021, the Post broke the story that the University of Freiburg stopped its cooperation agreement with Isfahan University.
The city of Freiburg has been embroiled in numerous pro-Iran regime scandals. Freiburg rolled out the red carpet for Mohammad Khatami in 208, who served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005, and praised the late French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.
Saeed Laylaz, former advisor to President Khatami, recently said that “If Israel or the US respond to the Islamic Republic’s attacks, the Islamic Republic will test its first nuclear bomb, “ according to Iran International.
The New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote in 2016 “the Islamic Association of the University of Isfahan has announced that it will hold its own Holocaust cartoon contest. The Islamic Association held a similar contest in 2015. In announcing this year’s contest, the Islamic Association explained that its goal is to demonstrate sympathy with oppressed Palestinians and show hatred towards the Zionist regime and ‘the child killer Israel.’ The organizers claim the contest is ‘not anti-Semitic,’ but rather an effort to question such a disgraceful and false phenomenon – the Holocaust - something which no one in the Western world dares to do.”