Iranian “youths” are up to their usual mischief in the town of Castrop in North Rhine-Westphalia

Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this op-ed from Die Welt:

The federal government underestimates the Islamic danger

by Lennart Pfahler
January 8, 2023

The decisive tip about the danger of attack in North Rhine-Westphalia came from the FBI. The authorities there have better chances of recognizing danger than the German services. It was wrong from the start to dissolve the circle of experts on Islamism.

Again, a plan for an attack. Again, thwarted at the last minute. Over the weekend, SEK officers [tactical police] arrested a 32-year-old Iranian. He reportedly attempted to obtain the bio-weapons cyanide and ricin. According to security circles, the man sympathizes with the Islamic State. So the FBI gave a decisive tip to the German Federal Criminal Police. The security authorities once again profited from their foreign contacts. There, the authorities have far better chances of monitoring dangers. Chances for which the investigators and intelligence services here have fought for years.

On the other hand, the federal government has recently acknowledged the Islamism theme with indifference. A group of experts based at the Federal Interior Ministry under the traffic light coalition* will not be continued. It has been canceled without replacement.

A series of attacks against synagogues shocked the Ruhr District back in November: Shots fired at a rabbi’s house in Essen and an arson near the synagogue in Bochum. Investigators anticipated a planned attack in Dortmund. They suspect a group with the best connections to the Iranian state to be behind the series of attacks. Die Welt investigations showed: At least one suspect went in and out of a radical Shia mosque. Followers of the Hizbollah terror organization and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards meet there.

How is Germany reacting? Perhaps the decisive blow against Iranian Shia extremism is still to come. The doors of the Islamic Center of Hamburg (IZH) are still open. The IZH is considered the most important representative of the mullahs’ regime. And the Revolutionary Guards are still not classified as a terror organization. The prerequisites for that have not been met, explains the Foreign Office. That is nonsense. This federal government needs an Islamism expert circle more urgently than ever.