1 year ago
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CARPO think-tank CEO Adnan Tabatabai
A member of the German Parliament has confirmed that his country’s foreign ministry has extended a €900,000 contract for consultation with a pro-Islamic Republic company.
Norbert Röttgen, who served as a former Chair of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a tweet that the German Federal Foreign Office has renewed the two-year contract with the Carpo thinktank, an institute led by Adnan Tabatabai who allegedly lobbies for the Islamic Republic.
Adnan Tabatabai is co-founder and CEO of the Berlin-based Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO), and is the son of Sadeq Tabatabaei, the brother-in-law of the Islamic Republic’s founder Rouhollah Khomeini who served as Iran’s deputy prime minister from 1979 to 1980. Adnan is known in international media as an Iran expert and a supporter of the regime.
He has on several occasions talked about normalizing relations between the West and the Islamic Republic and is in favor of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal or the JCPOA. He is consulted by the German Federal Foreign Office, members of the German Bundestag, political foundations as well as journalists and authors.
There are unconfirmed reports that he is also involved in money laundering schemes for the Islamic Republic in Germany.
The move seems contradictory to Berlin’s policies of pressuring the Islamic Republic over its human rights violations. Debate still rages in Germany over listing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as ‘terrorists,’ with Röttgen tweeting “You have to Decide Now.”
Rottgen, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, has been at loggerheads with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, since Baerbock announced October 31 that the European Union was considering sanctioning the Guards (IRGC).
