by Stefano Piazza
Germany’s intelligence agencies are investigating some 700 individuals linked to the Berlin-based “Mustafa Institute” for possible espionage and terrorist recruitment on behalf of Iran, according to German media. The institute, a branch of Iran’s Mustafa University, serves as a recruitment platform for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, which supports terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah around the world. According to U.S. Treasury documents, Mustafa University, with branches around the world, is a key tool for the Quds Force’s intelligence gathering and recruitment of foreign militias. In April 2019, the United States designated the Quds Force as a foreign terrorist organization. Bild writes that investigators targeted three confidential lists: 63 individuals with German citizenship,551 students connected to Germany and 78 German trainees.
CSU leader Alexander Dobrindt called on Interior Minister Nancy Faeser “to immediately close the Mustafa Institute as the Iranian threat is obvious. Iranian Islamic institutes on German soil must be closed without delay” CDU intelligence expert Christoph de Vries asked why Faeser has not yet closed the institute, noting its longstanding presence on U.S. and Canadian sanctions lists. He pointed out that Mustafa University was founded by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself as a central organ for spreading fundamentalism and recruiting for Quds Force terrorism. Who is in charge of the recruitment of spies in Berlin? The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Ismail Ghani, oversees the Quds Force’s covert operations. The Quds Force, through the Mustafa Institute in Berlin-Lichterfelde, runs intelligence activities targeting Germany and other Western nations.
But what is the Al Mustafa University?
It is not a normal university as is, for example, the “Tabataba’i” other Iranian university but an institution sanctioned by the U.S. and Canadian governments as a longa manus of the Quds Force, the branch of the Revolutionary Guardians that specializes in intelligence and guerrilla warfare (in essence, a whole of intelligence and special forces). The U.S. government designation states that the Quds Force “uses al Mustafa University to develop student exchanges with foreign universities for the purpose of indoctrinating and recruiting foreign sources. Al Mustafa facilitated the arrival in Iran of unwitting tourists from Western countries, from whom members of the Quds Force sought to gather information.”
The system is clear. The “al Mustafa,” in addition to disseminating Iranian propaganda, does intelligence work, recruiting sources and even fighters. Both the U.S. and Canadian governments claim that subjects recruited by “al Mustafa” in various countries have been sent to fight in Syria and that the Quds Force “has been using the al Mustafa campus in Qom as a recruitment camp for Pakistani students to join the Zaynabiyoun Brigades.” This university is responsible for exporting Shiite Islamist thoughts; its ideology and activities are incompatible with the liberal democratic principles of the Federal Republic of Germany, the other countries of the European Union, and the same goes for Switzerland, which is certainly not immune to the phenomenon.
Iranian infiltration in France
The French Communist Party has hosted prominent figures linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran in its headquarters on several occasions. Members of France Insoumise, the party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also have well-established and well-documented relationships with Palestinian activists affiliated with an organization considered close to the Guards of the Islamic Revolution. Previously, the Socialist Party had already been the target of an Iranian infiltration attempt, which was promptly foiled by the counterintelligence services.Recently, French journalist Emmanuel Razavi reported that a meeting of the “Palestine Vivera” collective will be held on May 2 at the Communist Party premises located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, with the participation of Salah Hamouri.
This 39-year-old French-Palestinian lawyer is believed to be close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FPLP), a Marxist-revolutionary movement listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union. Hamouri, who is also the son-in-law of former Communist MP Jean-Claude Lefort (who died in June 2024), has always denied any connection with the FPLP, despite being sentenced to seven years in prison by an Israeli court in 2008 for plotting to assassinate a former chief rabbi of Israel. Hamouri was also linked to Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese FPLP militant with connections to Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia. Kuntar, sentenced to life in prison in Israel in 1980 for the murder of a father and his four-year-old daughter, was released in 2008 as part of an exchange and later killed in an Israeli attack in Syria.