The Iranian regime planned to assassinate Volker Beck, president of the German�’Israeli Society (and former member of the German Parliament), and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the Der Spiegel media outlet revealed last week.
The report comes after Germany indicted two men last month for plotting to kill two prominent leaders of Jewish and Israeli communities in Germany on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Beck described in an interview with the Jewish�’German newspaper Juedische Allgemeine how his life changed after learning of the threat, and how he believes Germany should respond to Iran.
Beck said that in late May or early June 2025, he received a phone call from Germany’s state security service requesting an urgent meeting. At the meeting, he was told that there was a concrete threat against him personally. In the hours and days that followed, security measures around him were increasingly tightened.
From that moment, his life changed completely. Security officials advised him not to leave his home, even to walk his dog, without a police escort. His meetings outside his home were drastically reduced, and his daily life became a complex security operation. “When you need six to ten security personnel for every leisure activity, you think twice,” Beck said. He added that the period still affects him, saying, “Nothing is normal anymore.”
Beck sharply criticized German intelligence services, saying that without information received from “friendly services,” German authorities would not have been aware of the threat at all. “Without the Mossad, I would apparently already be dead,” he said, adding that German intelligence services were “blind once again.”
In the interview, Beck called on Germany to change its approach toward Iran, stressing that it has been clear for years that Tehran plans attacks abroad against Jewish targets, regime opponents, and friends of Israel. He mentioned the 1992 shooting attack at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, in which four Iranian dissidents were murdered, saying that Germany has failed to draw the necessary conclusions since then.
He believes that the first step should be a drastic reduction of the Iranian embassy’s activity in Berlin. “The fewer people they have there, the fewer resources the Iranian regime has on the ground to plan attacks,” he said. Beck acknowledged that reducing the diplomatic staff would not completely stop Iran, but would force it to operate in more complex and more easily monitored ways.
Beck also criticized the public silence in Germany surrounding the affair, asserting that there was no broad public outcry from the media or political system due to the fact that the targets were Jewish and Zionist.
According to German reports, the main suspect �” a Danish citizen of Afghan origin �” allegedly acted on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and maintained contact with the Quds Force, its foreign operations unit. According to the indictment, he was asked in early 2025 to gather information on Schuster and Beck, as well as other Jewish figures in Berlin. Another suspect is accused of agreeing to help obtain weapons and recruit an assassin.
Beck concluded that from his perspective, the question of Jewish security in Germany is not only about physical protection. The greater challenge, he said, is whether German society can make Jews feel they are not alone.
“Germany has a choice,” he said.
(YWN Israel Desk�”Jerusalem)
