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A crackdown on the Iranian Baha'is in Isfahan has prompted German-Iranians to urge the mayor of the southwestern German city of Freiburg to pull the plug on its municipal partnership with Isfahan.
The violent seizure of the eleven Baha’i women follows the October sentencing of ten Baha’i women in Isfahan to a total of 90 years in prison.
“Two days before the United Nations reviews Iran’s human rights record, it commits yet another senseless act against women who are completely innocent. Their so-called 'crime' was to serve their local communities, and now the Iranian government has detained them in violent home raids,” said Simin Fahandej, Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva.
Iran International obtained a January 30 letter from Behrouz Asadi, the head of the Democratic Forum of Iranians in Mainz, to Freiburg’s mayor Martin Horn.
Asadi wrote “The municipal administration in Isfahan has actively cooperated with the security and intelligence forces to repress the Baha'is .” Asadi added that “You are setting an example that you are tolerating and overlooking the regime’s course of action and the human rights violations that are taking place there.”
Horn did not respond to requests by Iran International for comment. Freiburg is the only German city that has a twin city partnership with an Iranian city.
The German city of Weimar ended its attempted partnership with Shiraz in 2010 because Iranian officials on a trip to Germany refused to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in Weimar.
Freiburg launched its partnership with Isfahan in 2000.
Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a German-Iranian political scientist, criticized Freiburg's partnership with Isfahan as hypocritical.
Iran, he said, has been oppressing women, crushing secular opposition, persecuting religious minorities and carrying out one of the highest execution rates globally.
“No one wanted to acknowledge at the time that Iran had already been a totalitarian dictatorship.”
Wahdat-Hagh, who is a Baha'i, is one of the world’s leading experts on the Baha'is in Iran. “The Freiburg Initiative did not want to know that Iran has wanted to destroy Israel since 1979 and had waged a war against Israel with the help of its proxies,” he added.
Assadi also noted in his letter to Horn that “Your partner city Isfahan is one of the places where the regime produces rockets, drones and bombs.” He noted that “the partnership is a status symbol of the regime with which it attempts to publicly whitewash its crimes.”
Iran’s military fired projectiles from Isfahan into Israel last year.
Michael Blume, the state commissioner tasked with fighting antisemitism, including Iranian government Holocaust denial, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Freiburg is located, has lashed out at Iranian dissidents opposed to Ali Khamenei’s government and has not called on Horn to end the partnership. Blume called Iranian dissidents “corrupt exiled nationalists.”
Ronai Chaker, a prominent activist from Germany’s Yazidi community who combats Islamism in the federal republic, told Iran International ”I find Freiburg's twin city partnership with Isfahan to be a scandalous betrayal of the values of democracy, human rights and Germany's historical responsibility toward the Jewish people."
"The systematic persecution of Baha'is, women, LGBTQ+ people and dissidents there is a clear human rights violation.”
In 2017, the Iranian authorities arrested more than 30 men suspected of being homosexuals at a private party last week in the Isfahan province.
Chaker said “The city of Freiburg must end this partnership immediately. Anyone who continues to cling to the relationship with Isfahan is complicit in the crimes of the mullahs' regime.”
She also took Blume to task for his reported enabling of the partnership. “Due to his silence and his lack of a critical attitude towards this twin city partnership, Blume has lost all credibility as an antisemitism representative. His resignation would be a logical step. Freiburg must clearly distance itself from Isfahan instead of giving the Iranian regime legitimacy through such partnerships.”
The Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi, who lives in Germany, previously said “Blume called people like me ‘corrupt exiled nationalists’ after I showed him leaked footage of Evin prison.”
Blume has refused to comment.
Amid celebratory gatherings attended by state officials, President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday: “If the US were sincere about negotiations, why did they sanction us?”
Reflecting Tehran's concerns about returning to the negotiating table with President Donald Trump who, during his first term, pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, Pezeshkian said: “He says, ‘Let’s have a dialogue,’ and at the same moment, he signs memos for all possible conspiracies against Iran.”
Further casting doubt on recent hopes for rapprochement amid a mood of mistrust, Pezeshkian accused Washington of orchestrating conspiracies against Iran while proposing talks and claimed it was Tehran's archenemy Israel, not Iran, that destabilized the Middle East.
The comments followed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent statement that negotiations with the US are “unwise and dishonorable.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi echoed similar sentiments, saying, “What they mean by negotiation is surrender. Iran negotiated in good faith, but the other side failed to fulfill its commitments and withdrew from the [2015 nuclear] agreement. Why should we trust them?”
Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh also rejected talks under current conditions, saying, “We will not negotiate under sanctions and threats, and we do not recognize the new US administration.”
IRGC Aerospace Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh mocked Trump’s threats, saying, “He does not have such courage. A powerful Iran does not submit to coercion.”
Like previous years, a statement was released by the government after the ceremony stressing that as the Supreme Leader said it is not wise or honorable to hold negotiations with the US.
“The government must strengthen security and intelligence structures to prevent the infiltration of enemy agents and divisive movements within the country’s institutions,” added the statement
The document also called for a stronger military. "We expect national officials to take decisive action against those disrupting the nation’s psychological security," it continued, "who, by aligning with the enemy, attempt to distort the truth.”
As officials rallied in support of the Islamic Republic, protests erupted in Tehran and other cities on Sunday night, where citizens chanted slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and showed anger at Supreme Leader Khamenei during state-organized fireworks displays.
The ongoing public unrest underscores the tensions within Iran as it faces mounting international and domestic challenges in the midst of its crushing economic crisis.
