“... The people who have been in prison so far cannot therefore be described as prisoners or detainees. "They are hostages of the regime," says Schindler, who now heads the Counter Extremism Project, a think tank that focuses on terrorism. Ultimately, the Iranians are not interested in giving the German detainees a fair trial, but rather in convicting them on flimsy evidence in order to use them as political bargaining chips. This was also the case with Helmut Hofer. "The Iranians' idea was to exchange him for the terrorist Darabi and his accomplices," says Schindler. Kazem Darabi was the mastermind behind the Mykonos attack in Berlin, in which four Kurdish politicians in exile were killed. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Germany did not allow itself to be blackmailed by Iran.” 

""Internally, the Iranian regime is weakened. However, there is currently no sign of disruption," Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director at the Berlin-based think tank Counter Extremism Project, told our editorial team. According to Schindler, the revolutionary potential in Iran and Syria is not comparable. "The resistance in Iran has energy, but no vision for the country's future. And it has neither organization nor structure. The opposition in Syria had all of these things," the expert emphasizes.”"

""Israel has shown Iran that it can, if it wants, carry out attacks on targets throughout Iran. It has used its fighter jets for this purpose, all of which have returned unscathed," explains terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler from the transatlantic think tank Counter Extremism Project (CEP) in an interview with DW.”"

“There was no shortage of strong words immediately after the news broke. For Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the execution of German-Iranian dual citizen Jamshid Sharmahd is a "scandal". According to Annalena Baerbock, her Foreign Office campaigned "tirelessly" for the businessman, who was kidnapped in Dubai in 2020, and sent high-ranking teams to Iran to prevent the execution of the death sentence: "We have repeatedly made it unmistakably clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences." […] According to Hans-Jakob Schindler, it is possible but not certain that "Tondar" was actually responsible. "After the attack, the German embassy in Tehran assumed that Islamists were more likely to be the perpetrators," says the senior director of the international Counter Extremism Project.”

"DW spoke with Middle East security expert Hans-Jakob Schindler about the risk of a further escalation in the Middle East after Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran."

“It was apparently intended to be an ultimate, devastating blow against Israel. This is suggested by new findings on the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. According to the New York Times and the Washington Post, the terrorist strategists around their leader Jahia Sinwar planned their attack in detail for more than two years. […] Hans-Jakob Schindler calls Iran's reaction to Hamas's request "typical". The leadership of the Islamic Republic almost always avoids an open "no" in negotiations and prefers to use formulations such as "further clarification required", says the senior director of the international Counter Extremism Project and head of the Berlin office.”