The Foreign Office supported a plan to liaise with Tehran

The Foreign Office has openly funded a think tank linked to the regime in Iran. A well-known expert is said to have affected Tehran’s image in the West.

Until May this year, the Foreign Office supported a project whose leader was close to the Islamic regime in Iran. This emerges from independent research by the Iranian exile broadcaster “Iran International” and the American media outlet “Semaphore”. Accordingly, the regime in Tehran created a network of Western scientists and political advisers in 2014 to enlist their help in influencing the West’s Iran policy. At the time, negotiations for a nuclear deal with Tehran were at a critical juncture.

Apart from prominent US-based Iran experts, Germany-based Iran expert Adnan Tabatabai is said to be involved in this network. He is the managing director of the Bonn-based Middle East think tank Garbo – according to “Bild” – with 900,000 euros. It is not clear to what extent this actually influenced the central government’s foreign policy.

News sites report, citing an email sent by Tabatabai to then-Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, that Tabatabai allegedly told Tehran that network members could write articles under current or former Iranian names. Officers. Scholars wrote essays as ghostwriters to influence the Islamic regime’s external image—and thus the West’s perception of the regime. It is unclear how many pieces were actually released.

When asked, Tabatabai denied the allegations. Tabatabai said there was no email correspondence. The report is based on “facts”, he told Semafor. Although the “Iran Experts Initiative” actually existed, it was “not initiated, coordinated or funded by Iran”, but was established by experts, he tells Die Welt. Accordingly, he alone among the accused denied the authenticity of the emails.

“Iran International” was previously subjected to a forensic examination and could not find any discrepancies in the metadata indicating unreliability.

In 2017, Jay Solomon, editor of the “Semafor” column, was accused of having business ties with an exiled Iranian arms dealer. As a result, he lost his position at the Wall Street Journal. However, the conclusions of his report are consistent with those of “Iran International”.

When asked by “Weld”, the Foreign Office did not want to comment on the new allegations against Tabatabai. Its funding was terminated in May 2022 due to public pressure. Iranians in Germany and other European countries have now long accused him of abusing his expert status in the German and international media for stories close to the regime.

Several people, who wished to remain anonymous for their safety, told “Übermedien” in an interview in October that Tabatabai was spreading “blameless propaganda”. “You don’t have to interview him, you can watch Iranian state television,” said one interviewee to “Ubermedia.” Amnesty International’s Shora Hashemi, an expert on Iran and executive director of the human rights organization Amnesty International, also criticized the July 2022 photo shared by Bayerbach with Tabatabai. Two months later, protests erupted in Iran after the violent death of 22-year-old Zina Mahza Amini. The hands of the ruling powers.