Israeli intelligence may have saved the life of Volker Beck, the president of the German-Israeli Society, who was targeted for assassination by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Two men have now been sentenced to prison for their roles in the plot, but in a peculiar twist, the German court refused to allow Beck to participate in the proceedings as a victim because the assassination had not progressed beyond the preparation stage.
On October 15, the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg sentenced 54-year-old Ali S., a Danish citizen of Afghan descent, to eight and a half years in prison. His accomplice, 43-year-old Tawab M., received four and a half years. According to the court, Ali S. received instructions directly from officers of the Quds Force, the foreign operations division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), during a visit to Tehran in early 2025.
His assignment was to gather intelligence on Beck and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and prepare attacks against Jewish and pro-Israel targets. Ali S. travelled to Berlin, photographing the German-Israeli Society’s offices, a kosher supermarket and a building associated with Schuster. German intelligence identified the supermarket as one of 11 potential Iranian targets in the country.
He also began recruiting people to carry out the attacks, including approaching his own daughter to ask whether she knew a woman willing to firebomb the supermarket. She refused.
For Beck’s assassination, Ali S. enlisted Tawab M. to find a gunman and obtain a pistol equipped with a silencer. Investigators recovered messages containing Beck’s photograph and the address of his organization. The operation was disrupted following intelligence investigations involving German and Danish authorities. Both men were arrested in Denmark in 2025.
Beck, a former German parliamentarian, told reporters during the trial that he believed an initial warning had come from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Without that warning, he said, he probably would not still be alive. German authorities also obtained evidence through surveillance and recordings of conversations between the conspirators. Presiding Judge Petra Wende-Spors concluded that the attacks had been directed from Iran and were intended to intimidate Jewish communities and supporters of Israel.
The convictions prompted Germany’s Foreign Ministry to summon Iranian Ambassador Majid Nili Ahmadabadi on October 19. Tehran rejected the accusations. Beck, however, wants the ambassador expelled.
The incident is not Germany’s first confrontation with Iranian state-directed terrorism. In 1997, a Berlin court determined that Iranian political leaders had ordered the 1992 murders of four dissidents at the city’s Mykonos restaurant. Germany subsequently expelled Iranian diplomats, triggering a broader diplomatic confrontation between Tehran and European governments.
The German convictions also come just one week after Montreal Jewish News reported on Canada’s participation in an international condemnation of Iranian terrorism.
Canada has also confronted a similar assassination threat. In October 2024, Canadian authorities warned former justice minister and longtime Montreal MP Irwin Cotler that Iranian agents might attempt to assassinate him within 48 hours. Cotler, who had spent years representing Iranian political prisoners and campaigning against the regime, was placed under armed police protection. The plot was subsequently disrupted.
In Germany, the man targeted for assassination is now fighting a separate legal battle over his treatment by the court. Beck sought to participate in the trial as a Nebenkläger, a status under German law that allows certain victims to join criminal proceedings and exercise additional legal rights. The court rejected his application, ruling that preparations for his murder did not qualify him for that status because the attack had not progressed to an actual attempt. Beck, who attended the trial under police protection, has challenged the decision before Germany’s Constitutional Court.
The distinction is an extraordinary one. German prosecutors established that an Iranian intelligence operation had selected Beck for assassination, identified his location and recruited accomplices to find a gunman and a silenced weapon. That was sufficient to send two men to prison, but because intelligence agencies intervened before the assassins could carry out their assignment, the intended victim was left watching the proceedings from the gallery.
Iran has denied any connection to the assassination plot.
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