Iranians cheered over the weekend as the country launched hundreds of drones and missiles toward Israel on Saturday night. One of the crowds was gathered in Isfahan, the major city located in the center of the country where the regime develops nuclear weapons and also manufactures its powerful Shahab medium-range missile. The city was the testing ground back in late October for the country's missile system, which proved capable of reaching Israel.
The Iranian regime’s devastating aerial bombardment over the weekend may have drawn sharp condemnation from the international community, including Germany which dispatched its foreign minister to Jerusalem on Wednesday. But the city of Freiburg, which has special ties to both Iran and Israel, has remained indifferent.
Located in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, Freiburg has maintained a twin city partnership with Isfahan since the year 2000. It's the only German city to stick with its municipal agreement with an Iranian city, unlike Weimar which scrapped its partnership with Shiraz in 2010 after visiting Iranian officials refused to visit the local Buchenwald concentration camp memorial.
Ironically, a visit to Freiburg by Muhammed Khatami, who served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005 and is well-known for being a Holocaust denier, is what prompted a former Freiburg mayor to establish a twin city pact with Tel Aviv in 2015 in order to blunt criticism that the university city was antisemitic.
While the weekend's aerial assault fueled existing cries for Freiburg to pull the plug on its partnership with Isfahan, the city's mayor Martin Horn, the city council, and civil society appear unmoved. It's far from the first time that the city's civil society, which is dominated by the mainstream Green and Social Democrats parties, has been unfazed by the genocidal antisemitism promoted by Isfahan’s leaders.
At a recent demonstration held on Al-Quds day, the last Friday of Ramadan that Iran has dedicated to inflammatory anti-Israel protests calling for its destruction, 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.”
The world's leading Nazi hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, told i24NEWS that “Iran is responsible for terrorism all over the world."
"What city in its right mind would want to have a twin city partnership with a country that is responsible for the largest percentage of terrorist acts around the world?”
Zuroff, who oversees the Simon Wiesenthal Center's office in Jerusalem, added “Iran has executed more than 800 people over the last year. There is no freedom or democracy in Iran. What [does Freiburg] gain by partnering with murderers who want to take over the world and would deal harshly with the people of Freiburg, among others?”
“The Jewish community should protest, but not only them, because the partnership affects every citizen of Freiburg," Zuroff concluded.
The head of Freiburg's tiny Jewish community, Irina Katz, has refused to urge Mayor Horn to sever ties with Isfahan. Katz, however, did take to the streets of Freiburg to demonstrate against the Netanyahu government's efforts to reform Israel’s judiciary last year.
Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Jonathan Conricus, who served as the Israeli army's international spokesperson from 2017 to 2023, told i24NEWS: "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."
Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian who fled the Islamic Republic and now lives in Germany, told i24NEWS, “On the same day that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) proudly attacked Israel with drones and missiles, the morality police returned to the streets of Iran, and since then Iranian women have been beaten and arrested in the most violent ways. As Israeli officials have demanded, the IRGC must be listed as a terrorist organization and partnerships such as the town twinning between Isfahan and Freiburg must be ended.”
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Wearing protective clothes, an Iranian scientist at the Uranim Conversion Facility, just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran
(Photo: AP)
Vojoudi, who is an associate fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, also works to promote Israel-Iranian relations, asked, “How can Germany have diplomatic relations with this regime? Not only Germany, but all the democracies that are concerned about human rights violations, don't they know that the Islamic regime is violating rights in Iran? Just look at all the political prisoners in Iran and the hate speeches on Al-Quds Day calling for the destruction of Israel.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS, “What more will it take for the elected officials and citizens [of Freiburg] to end its relationship with the Iranian city of Isfahan and follow the lead of every other German city.“
Cooper added Freiburg could always renew the relationship with Isfahan "when the people of Iran can live in freedom and speak their minds and can worship as they see fit.” He added, “The move to cancel the twin city partnership should be led by German civil society, including the German-Israel friendship society's (DIG) [regional chapter] in Stuttgart.”
Dr. Kazem Moussavi, the well-known German-Iranian dissident who is the spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in exile, echoed Cooper’s appeal to civil society groups in Baden-Württemberg: "The DIG as a whole, including the DIG-Stuttgart and Freiburg, has a role model function, and is obliged to protest the loudest against the eliminatory antisemitism of the mullahs, which is ignored within the framework of this twinning of cities. They should be on the side of Israel and those fighting for freedom. People should stand against the antisemitic regime in Iran and not on the side of appeasement."
The head of the government-funded DIG, Oliver Vrankovic, refused to respond to an i24NEWS press query.
Moussavi, who has campaigned for over 20 years to end the partnership, added “Martin Horn and Michael Blume, the commissioner tasked with fighting antisemitism, in particular, bear a moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the twin city partnership between Freiburg and Isfahan under the dictatorial administration of the mullah antisemites."
He added, “It is not the oppressed Isfahan civil society that benefits from this partnership, but rather the mullahs' economic and cultural partners in Freiburg and their German appeasement operators. This scandalous town partnership must be ended immediately.”
i24NEWS press queries to Mayor Horn and the DIG-Freiburg were not immediately returned.