Germany’s journalists, human rights activists, and taxpayers are paying a painful price for its country’s woefully flawed “critical dialogue” policy with the Iranian regime.

Last month, Iran’s rulers paraded two German journalists, Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch of the Bild newspaper, on an Iranian state-controlled television station, claiming that the two journalists admitted to being hoodwinked into travelling to Iran by Mina Ahadi, a German-Iranian human rights activist.