Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been recruiting criminal drug dealers and gang members in recent years to harm Israelis on European soil, according to an investigation by Channel 12.
Tehran does not maintain direct connections with its terrorist cells in Europe so as to preserve a “space of denial.” Using criminals to follow Israelis in Europe and harm them “allows Iran to claim that the elimination operations are criminal in general,” the report said.
The phenomenon is not new, with the first evidence of the Islamic Republic’s use of criminals-for-hire in Europe obtained a decade ago.
“The main Iranian goal was to carry out assassinations of exiled Iranian opposition figures as well as Israeli or Jewish targets. Since 2015, about 20 such attempts have been exposed,” the report states.
The Iran is behind a series of terrorist attacks carried out by criminal gangs targeting Israeli embassies throughout Europe since Oct. 7, the Mossad intelligence agency said earlier this year.
In July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the need to adopt a new approach to the threat posed by the mullahs in Tehran.
“The monstrous massacre on Oct. 7 reshuffled the deck. It requires a very different operative concept that takes into account Iran’s efforts to strangle us in a chokehold on seven fronts,” said Netanyahu.