Germany has an embassy in Tehran, which was originally established in the court of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in October 1884 and has been in the present building since 1894.

[4] During the Qajar era, with the increasing unpopularity of world powers in Persia such as Russia and United Kingdom, especially after the Treaties of Turkmenchay and Gulistan and the revolt of Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi in the Tobacco movement, many Iranian intellectuals began searching for a "third force", which could be relied upon as a potential ally: Germany, which had largely remained out of the Great Game.

[6] In that regard, it is even written that Amir Kabir always showed interest in discussing the structural system of Germany's government and society as a model for modernizing his country.

In order to fight the growing racial antisemitism among the Iranian population, many Jews and Arabs joined the Tudeh party and advocated for communism.

[14] Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian junior diplomat, tried to save many Persian Jews from extermination by convincing many Nazi officials to leave them alone.

The library contained over 7500 books selected "to convince Iranian readers... of the kinship between the National Socialist Reich and the Aryan culture of Iran".

[17] In various pro-Nazi publications, lectures, speeches, and ceremonies, parallels were drawn between the Shah and Hitler, and praises were given to the charisma and the virtue of the Führerprinzip.

[18] For many decades, Iran and Germany had cultivated ties, partly as a counter to the imperial ambitions of Britain and Russia (later the Soviet Union).

His followers, who refused the British occupation of Iran, such as Fazlollah Zahedi[25] and Mohammad Hosein Airom, shared similar fates.

Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant was also designed and partially built by the German Kraftwerk Union of Siemens, meanwhile, an agreement was inked.

Along with the agreement, a letter of intent was also signed on November 10 by which the West German firm would construct four new 1,200-megawatt nuclear power stations in Iran over the next ten years.

On September 17, 1992, Kurdish Iranian insurgent leaders Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi were assassinated at the Mykonos Greek restaurant, in Berlin, Germany.

In the Mykonos trial, the courts found Kazem Darabi, an Iranian national, who worked as a grocer in Berlin, and the Lebanese Abbas Rhayel, guilty of murder and sentenced them to life in prison.

[34] That was followed in 2005, when a German angler on vacation in the United Arab Emirates was arrested in the Persian Gulf and convicted to a prison sentence of 18 months.

[36] However, Tehran's tensions with Germany and most of the rest of Europe have eased considerably in recent years after the election of the more moderate Hassan Rouhani as president in 2013.

On 4 February 2006, the day that the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors voted to refer ("report") Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy that the world must act to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

[38] In July 2015, Germany was the only non-UNSC nation that signed, along with the five UN Security Council's five permanent members, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA in May 2018, Germany, along with the two other EU state signatories to the JCPOA (E3), issued a joint statement, which said, "It is with regret and concern that we, the Leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom take note of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States of America from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

[41] In September 2020, in the first coordinated move by the three countries, Germany, France and the UK summoned Iranian ambassadors in a joint diplomatic protest against Iran's detention of dual nationals and its treatment of political prisoners.

[44] In November, the German parliament passed a comprehensive package of measures against the Islamic Republic following a session on the current situation in Iran, intended to increase pressure on the regime in Tehran.

"[47] In retaliation, Iran declared two German diplomats as personae non gratae and ordered them to leave the country, accusing Germany of interfering in its judicial affairs.

[48] In April 2024, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of Britain, France, and Germany to question what it referred to as their "irresponsible stance" regarding its drone and missile attack against Israel.

[49] In July 2024, Iran's foreign ministry summoned the German ambassador over Germany's decision to ban the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH) association; the Federal Ministry of the Interior had argued the IZH acted as a direct representative of Iran's Supreme Leader and sought to bring about an Islamic revolution in Germany that would create theocratic rule.

[50] In October 2024, Germany announced that it would shut all three Iranian consulates on its territory in reaction to the execution of German-Iranian national Jamshid Sharmahd but allowed the embassy to remain open.

Several renowned German companies are involved in major Iranian infrastructure projects,l especially in the petrochemical sector, like Linde, BASF, Lurgi, Krupp, Siemens, ZF Friedrichshafen, Mercedes, Volkswagen and MAN (2008).

German business deals with Iran were booming prior to 2022, as it exported €1.2 billion worth of goods, mostly automobile parts and pharmaceuticals.