The domestic intelligence agency for the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg revealed on June 26, 2025, that an estimated 1,250 Hezbollah active members are spread across the Federal Republic, including 100 in Baden-Württemberg.
Despite a formal German ban on Hezbollah activity within the borders of the Federal Republic in 2020, lax enforcement of the proscribed terrorist movement Hezbollah has enabled pro-Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah activities to flourish.
Baden-Württemberg is a hotbed of Hezbollah activity. The new Baden-Württemberg intelligence report seemed to recognize a Shi’ite terrorism problem that is spiraling out of control.
Lax enforcement of the proscribed terrorist movement Hezbollah has enabled pro-Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah activities to flourish.
In a footnote regarding the Hezbollah membership section, the intelligence agents wrote, “The Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) currently believes that there are several individuals in Baden-Württemberg who are considered Hezbollah officials. These individuals are connected to a larger network of supporters. Furthermore, the LfV assumes that there are an undetermined number of Hezbollah sympathizers in Shiite-Islamist communities who are not integrated into official structures.”
The LfV, the state domestic intelligence agency for Baden- Württemberg, is akin to a Federal Bureau of Investigation branch office in the United States. In 2022, the state intelligence agency documented 75 active Hezbollah members. The number of Hezbollah members has climbed to more than 100 in the state.
The threats are real. Just days after the intelligence report was released, German and Danish authorities announced the arrest of a Danish man, Ali S., for targeting “Jewish localities and specific Jewish individuals” in Berlin on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s intelligence apparatus.
Despite the conviction of a Pakistani man in 2017, who was paid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to engage in an assassination attempt of pro-Israel advocates, Germany has refused to outlaw the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Qods Force—a part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—paid Pakistani Syed Mustafa at least $2,300 from July 2015 to 2016 to spy on Jewish and Israeli institutions and implement the murder plot.
Tolerance of radical Islamist ideologies has a long history in Baden-Württemberg.
In 2020, Israeli media reports revealed that Israeli intelligence officials notified the authorities in Baden-Württemberg that Hezbollah stored ammonium nitrate in the state. Hezbollah terrorists have used ammonium nitrate to launch bomb attacks in Argentina, Britain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and France, and the same explosive material destroyed the Beirut port in August 2020, killing 218 people and wounding more than 7,000 others.
Winfried Kretschmann, the Green Party governor of Baden-Württemberg and a former Maoist, declined to open a public investigation into how Hezbollah was able to store ammonium nitrate in his state. The opposition parties in the state’s parliament showed no appetite to pursue the matter.
Tolerance of radical Islamist ideologies has a long history in Baden-Württemberg. The state’s intelligence agency warned as early as 2003 about Michael Blume, an Islam advisor for the then-Christian Democratic Union government, who was responsible at the time for dialogue with the state’s 400,000 Muslims.
According to the intelligence agency, “Blume largely ignores the danger posed by radical Muslim associations that are only superficially willing to engage in dialogue. Furthermore, he allows a proven extremist with the code name ‘Ferramis’ to speak relatively uncritically,” reported the journalist Rainer Wehaus in Stuttgarter Nachrichten.
Promotion of a hardcore Islamist as a new “Islamic elite” in Germany is a “bad slap in the face of liberal integrated and integrable Muslims.”
A leading German expert on Islam, Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, told Stuttgarter Nachrichten at the time that Blume’s failure to recognize his “fatal mistake” via promotion of a hardcore Islamist as a new “Islamic elite” in Germany is a “bad slap in the face of liberal integrated and integrable Muslims.” Blume is a member of the Christian Democratic Union party, which is Kretschmann’s junior coalition partner.
In 2018, Kretschmann’s government assigned Blume to be the state’s first commissioner tasked with combating antisemitism. Blume’s failure to combat Iranian regime antisemitism in the state and his attacks on German Jews and Israel prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 2021 to include him on its list of top ten worst outbreaks of antisemitism.
Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to United States, urged Blume to resign prior to the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel for defaming the “father of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” Major General Orde Charles Wingate. After the Hamas attack, a congressional committee on “Addressing the Scourge of Antisemitism” in Europe discussed the need for Blume to be dismissed.
Friedrich Merz, who succeeded Olaf Scholz as chancellor of Germany on May 6, 2025, has signaled greater moral clarity and a harder line against terror. Events in Baden-Württemberg suggest he has his work cut out for him.
