to the commemorative plaque in front of the restaurant and called it an insult to Iran. In 1999, a German, Helmut Hofer, was arrested in Tehran after he had an affair with an Iranian woman. That caused some tremors in the domestic political landscape and the diplomatic relations of Tehran-Berlin. 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. In 2009 a German lawyer, Andreas Moser, was arrested during the protests against the 2009 elections but was released after one week. Also in 2005, the hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stirred relations with comments directed against the Jewish Holocaust. 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. 2000s to 2010s 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. With Germany having been one of the three European Union countries that had negotiated with Iran for two-and-a-half years in a bid to persuade Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program, Merkel said that Iran was a threat to both Europe and Israel. 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. Together, we emphasise our continuing commitment to the JCPoA. This agreement remains important for our shared security" 2020s In January 2020, Germany was among the E3 states that jointly formally informed the EU that they had registered their "concerns that Iran [was] not meeting its commitments under