Iran has increased efforts to target critics of the regime living abroad, as well as planning attacks on anti-Iran dissidents, Israeli and US officials, often subcontracting the attacks to hired local proxies.
Times of Israel Members of the Jewish community and individuals with links to Israel were among those targeted, as well as dissidents and media outlets critical of Tehran, The Washington Post reported. The newspaper based its reporting on government documents and interviews with 15 officials in Washington, Europe and the Middle East.
Tehran has targeted former senior U.S. government officials; dissidents who have fled the country for the United States, Britain, Canada, Turkey and Europe; media organizations critical of the regime; and Jewish civilians or those with links to Israel, according to the officials and government documents.
Washington Post The intensity of the Iranian campaign is reflected in its global reach, officials said. Just since last year, Western security and law enforcement agencies said they have disrupted an attempt to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton in Washington and one to kidnap an Iranian American journalist, Masih Alinejad, in New York City; multiple attempts to kill British nationals and others living in the United Kingdom; an operation using an Iranian drug dealer to murder French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy in Paris; attempts to kill Israeli business people in Cyprus, including one allegedly overseen by a Russian Azerbaijani citizen that involved a surveillance team made up of Pakistani nationals; and a plan to use assassins recruited in a prison in Dubai to kill Israeli business people in Colombia.
The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran. Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was “mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.”
This July, police arrested a man in Brooklyn and found a loaded assault rifle in his vehicle. Prosecutors did not identify Alinejad, but she wrote on Twitter that she was the intended target, posting a doorbell video of a man appearing to take cellphone footage of the entrance to her home.
“I’m still shocked that the Islamic Republic has tried on two occasions to eliminate me, an American citizen, on U.S. soil. And not paid a price,” Alinejad said in an emailed statement.
The report also noted a plan to kill French Jewish journalist Bernard-Henri Levy in Paris using an Iranian drug dealer. Levy was targeted by IRGC’s Quds Force, which hired the drug dealer for $150,000.
That man in turn recruited others to help carry out the ultimately doomed attack, the report said. The report said the French national was targeted for speaking out against the Iranian regime.
Many of the attempted killings had been subcontracted by Iran to thieves, drug dealers and other criminals in return for payouts of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A report Wednesday also said German authorities also believe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind a string of recent attacks on synagogues in Germany.
Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. counterterrorism official and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that, of the 124 foreign plots by Iran he has tracked since 1979, 36 have occurred since Soleimani’s killing, which he called “an extraordinary increase.” More than a quarter of those took place in the United States, compared with just under 15 percent before Soleimani died, Levitt added.
This month, the head of Britain’s domestic security agency, MI5, said in public remarks that authorities had uncovered at least 10 “potential threats” to kidnap or kill British nationals or people based in the United Kingdom. Days earlier, the British Foreign Office summoned Iran’s senior diplomat in the country to answer for threats against journalists. Iran has targeted employees at BBC Persian and Iran International, a Persian-language news channel headquartered in London, labeling them instruments of the West and peddlers of anti-regime sentiment, according to British officials and Iranian nationals living in the country.
Officials told The Washington Post that the orders to carry out killings and kidnappings came from the top levels of the Iranian government. The report said many of the plots were planned to avenge the January 2020 killing of Iranian al-Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani.
Of course. Remember, it’s Islamic.