Benjamin Weinthal is a journalist and fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who covers European politics, transatlantic relations, and Middle Eastern affairs. He contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard from 2009 to 2017, reporting on European foreign policy, Iran sanctions, Israeli-European relations, and Western responses to Islamism. Based in Europe, he is also known for his reporting for the Jerusalem Post and other outlets.
Startling new evidence from German intelligence reports shows the Tehran regime is working to illegally obtain technology and know-how to advance its nuclear weapons and missile programs, despite the 2015 agreement to curb its nuclear program.
The historian Jeffrey Herf's profound new book shows that German-animated left-wing terrorism targeting Israel was not a tactic but rather part of a long-war strategy to destroy the Jewish state. Academic study and journalism on the now-defunct East German Communist state and radical West German…
Two weeks ago, al Qaeda-linked jihadists attacked the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso and murdered 28 people, including an American missionary. It was the work of al Qaeda’s Algerian franchise, one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups, albeit one less known to Westerners. Al Qaeda in the Islamic…
The question is not whether Iran can be trusted to uphold the nuclear deal now being negotiated in Vienna (it can’t), but whether the Obama administration and its P5+1 partners can be trusted to punish Iran when it violates the agreement?
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Germany appeared over the past several months to have finally fallen in line behind European Union efforts to stiffen economic sanctions against Iran. But in late October a group of German parliamentarians dealt a blow to the campaign to isolate Iran’s rulers. Bundestag Members Bijan Djir-Sarai of…
The European Union passed a new round of Iran sanctions on Monday, targeting the Islamic Republic’s vulnerable financial, shipping, and bank sectors.
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As the U.S. and its allies prepare to return to the negotiating table with Iranian representatives, hoping to reach a deal on their nuclear ambitions, the Islamic Republic has significantly ratcheted up its efforts to repress religious minorities in the country.
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Berlin—On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York brought charges against Arid Uka, a radical Islamist who killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two more in Germany’s Frankfurt International Airport in March.
Berlin—In separate efforts, Republican congressmen Mike Conaway and Peter King have confronted the world's third largest shipping company—the French-owned CMA CGM—for enabling Iranian arms to be smuggled aboard container ships. Some of the intended recipients of Iranian arms include the terrorist…
Berlin—Since President Obama ordered the special forces strike that killed mass murderer Osama Bin Laden earlier this month, the German government has grown increasingly reluctant to help Washington find terrorists who are fighting U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Berlin—Many European reactions to the recent murders by radical Islamists of pro- Palestinian Israeli filmmaker Juliano Mer-Khamis and Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni replicate the typical recurrence of the same: Shift the blame to Israel in an a priori fashion without delving into existing…
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Gene Simmons, a cofounder of the rock band Kiss, recently returned to his native Israel, after a 52-year hiatus. Unlike other entertainers who have boycotted the Jewish state, such as Elvis Costello, the Pixies, and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Simmons expressed his support for Israel. “The countries…
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U.S. frustration with German chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, seems to have reached a breaking point this week. Germany’s recalcitrant position about shutting down Iran’s main financial conduit in Europe – the Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (EIH) –…
“We can only find the ways to communism if we get started and try them out, whether in the opposition or in the government,” Gesine Lötzsch, co-president of the German Left Party, declared earlier this week.
Germany’s journalists, human rights activists, and taxpayers are paying a painful price for its country’s woefully flawed “critical dialogue” policy with the Iranian regime.
The German equivalent of Charles W. Freeman Jr. has surfaced in a WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. embassy in Berlin. His name is Christoph Heusgen and he is a senior adviser on the Mideast to German chancellor Angela Merkel.
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A rare note of European journalistic optimism in the aftermath of Israel's naval interception in May of a flotilla headed for Hamas-ruled Gaza: BBC Panorama, an investigative TV program, aired several weeks ago a remarkably hard-hitting exposure (“Death in the Med”) of what unfolded on the Turkish…
Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, offered the following justification for not traveling with his gay partner to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries: "We want to encourage the idea of tolerance around the world but we don't want to achieve the opposite either by acting imprudently."
Many American and British bands – as well as other entertainers – have been waging an ongoing cultural-boycott-war against Israel. Grammy award winner Carlos Santana pulled the plug earlier this year on his Israel concert. And in the aftermath of Israel's May interception of the jihadist-controlled…
The European Union announced today that it would be imposing robust sanctions on Iran, targeting its energy, shipping, insurance and financial sectors. After seven years of being out-negotiated and out-organized by the mullahs, the 27 member states of the EU are now more cognizant of the Iranian…
The European Union is slated this week to wrap up a new round of sanctions. Their goal is to force Iran to suspend its illicit nuclear program. After years of inaction, the European Union is now amenable to inflicting real economic pain on the Iranian regime where it is most vulnerable –…
The anti-Israel, UN sponsored Goldstone Report enters its second phase of its assault on Israel, aiming at stripping that nation of its right to self-defense and legitimacy. (Anne Bayefsky detailed this move here.)
Last week, executives from two public German television channels hosted Ezzatollah Zarghami, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Zarghami allegedly has ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, an organization designated as a global terrorist entity by the U.S.…
All parties in the German Parliament passed a resolution last Thursday slamming the Jewish state for its interception of a flotilla heading for Gaza in open violation of Israel’s naval blockade.
The widespread condemnation Europeans have expressed toward Israel after its commandos boarded the so-called peace flotilla on May 31 - and used force only when threatened with death - signals a desire to turn every Israeli action of self-defense into absolution for the crimes of the Holocaust.
Two members of Germany's "post-communist" Left party, Inge Höger and Annette Groth, were on the Mavi Marmara last week and apparently used tax monies to fund their terror raid on Israel.
Just as the danger of homegrown political Islam is on display in the United States with the attempted Times Square bombing--the third attempted attack in six months--Germany seems to be recoiling to its pre-9/11 indifference toward growing radical Iranian Islam in its backyard. In late May, the…
On November 3, six days before the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, freshly reelected German chancellor Angela Merkel delivered what many German commentators deemed to be the speech of her political career before a joint session of Congress. Merkel championed the unwavering…