Iran is plotting terror attacks against Jews living in Europe, the US has revealed.
Tehran is “increasingly” using criminal networks to hunt down targets and “maintain plausible deniability” of their involvement, the US Treasury said. The Daily Express earlier this year revealed warnings that Iranian spies can hire assassins “very easily”.
The Americans sanctioned the Foxtrot Network, a crime gang based in Sweden, after linking it to an attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. The Foxtrot Network was described as “one of the most notorious criminal gangs based in Sweden, and has conducted shootings, contract killings, assaults and other forms of violence”. And the network’s “fugitive” leader, Rawa Majid, has also been personally sanctioned after cooperating with the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.
The US Treasury stated: “The Iranian regime, as part of its efforts to maintain plausible deniability for its external operations, has increasingly leveraged criminal networks as proxies to pursue its aims. It has targeted US nationals and, in furtherance of its stated commitment to achieve the destruction of Israel, has planned terror attacks against Israel and Jewish targets across Europe.
“Iranian Government officials have also sought to assassinate Iranian dissidents through criminal networks.”
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said: “Iran’s brazen use of transational criminal organisations and narcotics traffickers underscores the regime’s attempts to achieve its aims through any means, with no regard for the cost to communities across Europe.”
Majid was born in Iran but moved to the Swedish city of Uppsala, where he became involved in crime. He was convicted at age 19 of burglary and cigarette smuggling, before he moved on to drug dealing.
Majid was jailed for eight years after drugs were found in his garage, but he still managed to build up an extensive criminal network and has been a key player in the escalating gang violence in Sweden. He left the country in 2018 for Turkey, where he was able to obtain citizenship.
In September, investigators in Germany and France revealed that Iranian agents—who were acting through European drug traffickers living in Iran—hired criminals to carry out surveillance of Jews and Jewish businesses in Paris, Munich, and Berlin.
Dr Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism intelligence analyst, said Tehran “repeatedly” uses the Foxtrot and Rumba gangs, which operate in Sweden and the Hells Angels to act on their behalf.
Mr Levitt warned Iran also uses “Eastern European” gangs, which then ’sub-contract’ the activities. Iran has also used the Rumba organisation. The rival gangs are wanted by authorities in Sweden on suspicion of ordering killings in a brutal turf war over the country’s illegal drugs market.