On Thursday, Time Magazine reported that the IRGC had actually been using German front companies to buy “advanced printing machinery, watermarked paper and specialty inks” to print counterfeit Yemeni bank notes in violation of European export controls.

This was confirmed by US Treasury Department officials who said that these forgeries were potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The money was used to help the Houthis wage war on the internationally recognised government of Yemen and the US-backed Arab Coalition to reinstate said government, which has led to what Time called “the world’s worst humanitarian conflict”.

The US officials who uncovered Iran’s scheme met with their German counterparts at the Federal Ministry of Finance in April 2017 to express their concerns. They hoped that this would convince Germany about the need to counter Iran’s illicit activity in the Middle East, that Iran cannot be trusted, and that Germany should join the US in imposing sanctions on Iran.however this did not happen.

The German intelligence agencies issued several reports in 2017 documenting Iran’s use of front companies in Germany to procure nuclear and missile technology and the US designated the IRGC a terrorist entity, but Germany has refused to act. They’ve even allowed a former IRGC member to run an Iranian regime-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg.

The US even presented Germany with detailed blueprints that explained how the US would be waging war on Iran’s economy, but the European state did nothing.

According to sources familiar with US-German talks on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the US withdrew from in May, Germany is widely considered the least cooperative in confronting Iran’s bellicose activities.

In fact, German exports to Iran rose from €2.6b. in 2016 to €3.5 billion in 2017, despite warnings from the US and German intelligence agencies.

In July, the Hamburg intelligence agency released a 211-page report, which revealed that Iran is continuing to seek weapons of mass destruction.

It read: “[Iran is] still making an effort to obtain products for the manufacture of atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (proliferation) and the corresponding missile carrier technology (rocket technology).”

They also listed Syria, Pakistan and North Korea as other countries of concern, all three of which have ties to Iran.