Iran's revenge network worries the West

In mid-April, as a fragile truce was solidifying in the US-Israeli war against Iran, Tehran's embassy in London posted a recruitment message on Telegram.

She urged Iranians living in the United Kingdom to click on a link and join a campaign she called “sacrifice for the homeland,” calling on “all the proud sons and daughters of Iran” to “show unity.”

"Let us all stand together, ready to sacrifice our lives, because it is better than surrendering our country to the enemy," the message reads.

Details of the campaign were not disclosed. However, the British government did not take kindly to it. It summoned the Iranian ambassador and told him that “such actions and comments are completely unacceptable, and that the embassy must cease any form of communication that could be interpreted as inciting violence in the United Kingdom or internationally.”

That diplomatic signal was just one indication of Western governments' deep concern about the activities of Iranian operatives on their soil - a concern that has deepened as the war has focused attention on Tehran's covert capabilities abroad and their possible use in retaliation for attacks on Iran.

Western intelligence agencies have long accused Iran of organizing campaigns of intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and even assassinations of opponents abroad, from Iranian dissidents to non-Iranians it considers a threat. Iran has also reportedly attacked targets linked to Israel and Jewish communities.

Two men are due to go on trial in May over the attack on Puri Zerati, an Iran International journalist known for his critical reporting on the Islamic Republic, who was stabbed to death on a Wimbledon street in December 2024.

Since the start of the war in February, a number of European countries have preliminarily accused Iran of being behind a wave of arson and other attacks, including at least five attacks in the United Kingdom in a week.

As the number of such attacks increases, European security officials say they are concerned that Tehran could later retaliate for the assassination of senior Iranian leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by targeting a Western leader or military target.

“They would be happy to eliminate some important American target, like a base, a warship, a senior official. Something that would be equivalent in severity to the death of the supreme leader,” said John Raine, a former senior British national security official who is now a senior adviser at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"In line with their doctrine, they have invested heavily in asymmetric capabilities and capabilities abroad. But they will keep them in reserve," said Ryan. For Iranian leaders, he said, "revenge is as much a religious obligation as it is an emotional response."

However, it would take place in a separate timeframe from the war in the Middle East, he said: “It’s a dish best served cold.”

Late last year, Sir Ken McCollum, head of Britain’s domestic security service MI5, pointed to a “wave of Iranian transnational aggression,” including foiled assassination plots in Australia, Spain and the Netherlands. He said in October that MI5 had tracked more than 20 potentially deadly plots involving Iran in 2025 alone.

“Iran’s autocratic regime… is frantically trying to silence its opponents around the world, including the United Kingdom,” he said.

In May last year, British police arrested eight men, including seven Iranian nationals, in two investigations into alleged threats to national security. Trials in those cases are due to begin in October.

The British government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, part of MI5, raised the national terror threat level from "significant" to "severe" this week after two Jewish men were stabbed in London, although authorities have not yet linked the attack to Iran. A man has been charged in connection with the attack.

For Iranian leaders, revenge is as much a religious obligation as it is an emotional response. But it would take place on a separate timeline from the war in the Middle East. It is a dish served cold, said John Raine, a former senior British national security official.

However, experts say the beheading of Iran's security establishment - including the assassinations of National Security Council chief Ali Larijani and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib in March - has limited its ability to retaliate immediately, although Iranian security forces continue to operate, with evidence of a functional chain of command.

And despite its reputation for ruthlessness, the Islamic Republic has had difficulty carrying out complex, high-impact operations on Western soil.

It relied heavily on criminal gangs, hired operatives, and intermediary networks recruited via the Internet.

One former European security official said: “The structure is layered: someone in Iran talks to a middleman – say in Romania or Chechnya – and that person then directs operatives in the targeted country. This creates distance and the possibility of plausible deniability.”

Most of the alleged assassination plots linked to Tehran have targeted Iranian nationals. One, against American-Iranian radio host Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022, involved a mastermind in Iran who contacted a person in Chechnya, who then directed operatives on the ground, said Roger McMillan, a counterterrorism and security expert. The attacker, who was found with a Chinese-made assault rifle in his car, was arrested before he could carry out the attack.

There have also been plots against senior Western leaders, however. In 2024, Washington accused Shahram Poursafi, an alleged member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of trying to orchestrate the assassination of John Bolton, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, in retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, in a US drone strike in 2020.

US officials, who offered a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to his arrest, said that Pursafi spent months in 2021 and 2022 trying to recruit “criminal elements” in the US to kill Bolton, allegedly offering $300.000 for the job.

Pursafi told a contact, who turned out to be an FBI informant, that he had “another assassination job” after Bolton’s death, according to U.S. authorities. Donald Trump later said that U.S. intelligence agencies informed him of the alleged Iranian plot against him around that time.

Due to Iranian threats, the US government provided protection to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Trump special envoy for Iran Brian Hook in 2024, according to media reports.

“They want to retaliate against their adversaries,” said one former senior British intelligence official. “They will definitely want to try to hit a senior political figure (after Khamenei’s assassination). They are going for an eye for an eye.”

The case against Poursafi, however, also highlights another risk facing Iranian networks abroad: Even before the war, they were deeply infiltrated by Western intelligence and security services, several former Western security officials said.

A European security official said that Iran's special operations forces are divided into two separate units. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps division, which the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad calls "Unit 400," carries out operations exclusively against Iranian targets.

The Quds Force's special operations division, which the Mossad calls Unit 840, became fully operational in 2012 and carries out kidnappings and assassinations abroad against foreign nationals, a European security official said.

Special Operations Division officers have attempted assassinations and kidnappings of Israeli diplomats or intelligence officers in locations including Cyprus, Ethiopia, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Colombia, while Israeli businessmen have also been targeted in Ghana, Tanzania and Senegal, a European security official said.

“There is a set of targets among Iranian dissidents, for which one kind of team is sent, and a completely separate team that goes after non-Iranians,” said Jonathan Hackett, a former U.S. Marine Corps special operations officer and counterterrorism expert.

He said the deaths of several key figures in Iran's security and foreign intelligence services during the war made any major operation unlikely in the near term.

“The real challenge that the Iranians have created for themselves is that one individual often monopolizes a particular dossier, and when they are dead, they cannot pass on their influence to a successor.”

He added: “We saw this after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. When his successor took office, there was no overlap in the networks of influence, which immediately caused a significant decline in the Quds Force’s activities abroad.”

Some operatives working for Tehran abroad have been trained by Iranians, although they are not necessarily Iranian themselves. A former British official said: “These are mostly people who are ideologically sympathetic to the Islamic Republic.”

The former official said that for these operatives, "it's an ideological issue... You're not just an enemy of the state; you're an enemy of an ideology. And there's no moral qualms on their part about killing these people."

Translation: NB