The Islamic Republic's Use of Criminal Gangs in the West Has Accelerated

A recent report indicates an "unprecedented acceleration" in the Islamic Republic's use of criminals and criminal gangs in Western countries to target its opponents and Iranian media and human rights activists. This report, published on Thursday, September 13, by The Washington Post, shows that in recent years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has outsourced deadly operations and kidnappings against its opponents to various criminal groups, and these actions have been on the rise. The investigative report states that Iranian officials have utilized, among others, motorcycle gangs like the "Hells Angels," a Russian mafia network known as "Thieves in Law," a heroin distribution syndicate led by an Iranian trafficker, and violent criminal groups from Scandinavia to South America. Accordingly, the Islamic Republic has used these criminal gangs to target exiled opponents, journalists, and human rights activists in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. The newspaper writes: "Data released by the Washington Institute in August listed 88 cases of assassination, kidnapping, and other violent plots related to Iran over the past five years, surpassing the total from the previous four decades since the 1979 revolution. At least 14 of these recent cases involved criminal organizations." The outcomes of these conspiracy plans have varied. While some have been successful, others have failed due to the mistakes of hired individuals. British police: The suspects in the attack on Pouria Zareati are likely from Eastern Europe. According to The Washington Post, the networks behind the recent wave of violent plots against the Iranian opposition in Western countries have been secretly organized by special units in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran. The Washington Post states that this report is based on interviews with senior officials in over a dozen countries, hundreds of pages of criminal court records in the United States and Europe, as well as additional research documents obtained by The Washington Post from security services. The newspaper notes that the Islamic Republic has increasingly resorted to the method of "outsourcing" these actions because it makes it more difficult to attribute the attacks to Tehran, the amounts it spends are not very high, and if a conspiracy plan fails, the cost to the Islamic Republic is not significant. An American intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that the Islamic Republic, instead of putting its own agents at risk, with this method, in case of the conspiracy being exposed, will only see "two criminals they know from afar spending 20 years in prison." British officials have announced that Iran has planned more than 16 conspiracies in the past two years. The United States has also faced a wave of similar threats, including assassination and kidnapping plots by individuals reportedly linked to Iran. Iran has denied these accusations, claiming they are fabricated by Israel and certain Western intelligence agencies. The Washington Post's report further details incidents such as the knife attack on Pouria Zareati, an exiled Iranian journalist in London, and attempts to assassinate Masih Alinejad, a political activist opposed to the Islamic Republic in the United States. Previously, a research report by Radio Free Europe revealed that the Islamic Republic had attempted to physically eliminate Masih Alinejad using a criminal group in Azerbaijan. Earlier, the British news network ITV reported on December 20 of last year that "Iranian spies" had commissioned a "human trafficker" to assassinate two presenters of Iran International in London for a payment of $200,000. The Dutch prosecution announced the arrest of two suspects in the assassination attempt against the Iranian activist. This network, based on information received from the "hired individual," identified Simaye Sabat, a former presenter of Iran International, and Ferdad Farahzad, another presenter of the network, as the two targets of this operation, while also reporting that since this individual was "a double agent," the plot was exposed and the assassination plan was foiled. In relation to these actions, the UK Foreign Office's sanctions list includes the names of Mohammad Reza Ansari, Ali Esfanjani, Mohammad Abdul Razak Kanafani, Mohammad Reza Nasirzadeh, members of Unit 840 of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Najib Sharifi Zindashti, an Iranian drug trafficker, as well as two Turkish nationals named Ali and Abdul Wahab Kuchak. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which has a history of physically eliminating its opponents at various historical periods both inside and outside the country, has in recent years threatened numerous journalists and political activists with physical elimination through social media or pressured their families inside the country.