Iran expels German diplomat
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TEHRAN: Iran has expelled a German diplomat for "undiplomatic" behavior, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday. The expulsion followed a report in a German news magazine that an Iranian diplomat had been ejected from Germany in July.
"Responsible authorities recognized that this person was engaging in undiplomatic behavior and has to leave Iran," said Muhammad Ali Hosseini, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, without revealing the diplomat's name or giving any additional information.
A German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Sunday that she could only "confirm that a German diplomat has left Iran." The spokeswoman, who declined to elaborate, spoke on condition of anonymity because of ministry rules.
The German weekly Der Spiegel reported in December that Germany had expelled an Iranian consular attaché in July. The diplomat, identified only as Mohraramali D., had contacted a specialist firm in Bavaria, according to the article, apparently in the hope of buying a component that could be used in the uranium enrichment process.
Germany is one of three European powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Germany has strongly opposed any alleged Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons but has adopted a softer tone than Britain and France.
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Recently, however, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has shown a tougher stance toward Iran. In an opinion piece for the German daily Handelsblatt published Dec. 28, Merkel wrote that heading off the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, with tougher sanctions if needed, remains a "vital interest" for the world community.
Merkel did not refer specifically to a U.S. intelligence report concluding that Iran had halted a nuclear weapons development program in 2003, but wrote that "it is dangerous and still grounds for great concern that Iran, in the face of the UN Security Council's resolutions, continues to refuse to suspend uranium enrichment."
Merkel stressed in November that European countries wanted "to reduce our own trade relations with Iran," noting that the German government was restricting export guarantees and that German banks had moved to halt business with Iran.
Tehran's relations with Germany were once among the closest with any Western nation since Iran's 1979 revolution.
Germany and Iran were major trading partners until relations were frozen after a German court ruled in 1997 that the 1992 fatal shootings of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin had been ordered at the highest levels in Tehran. Two men convicted of the 1992 assassinations were released from prison last month.
The case of Helmut Hofer, a German businessman twice sentenced to death in Iran for a relationship with a 26-year-old Iranian medical student, further strained ties. Hofer was eventually acquitted and released from prison in 2000.
Relations significantly improved after the visit to Germany of the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami in 2000, but ties were strained once again in 2004 with the unveiling of a plaque in Berlin 1992 commemorating the killing of the four dissidents and holding Iran to blame.
In response, Iranian war veterans unveiled a plaque outside the German Embassy in Tehran accusing Germany of supplying chemical weapons to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
Cultural officials, however, have been working to improve ties. In August a German symphony orchestra played Beethoven and Brahms in Tehran in a rare visit by a European ensemble.
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