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German activists are raising an outcry over what they characterize as a growing "offensive of promoting German-Iran relations" on the part of German politicians and businesspeople that they believe is undercutting hard-won gains in the cooperative EU and U.S. effort to isolate Iran's government via sanctions.

Members of Stop the Bomb, a coalition of German intellectuals dedicated to preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, protested a November 22 meeting of the Iran Business Forum, a business networking group that hosted numerous Iranian officials at a Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Hamburg, Germany. Iranian Ambassador to Germany Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, a close confidant of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, reportedly gave the event's opening speech, according to the event programme.