Assassinations, fires, intimidation: Iran’s secret war in the West

Although a ceasefire was negotiated and then extended in April, the Israeli-American-Iranian conflict remains fragile. Especially since certain Western governments remain on alert in the face of Tehran, which holds certain countries responsible for the assassination of senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.

Some experts say Iran will likely seek retaliation. “They would dream of being able to neutralize a major American asset, like a base, a warship or a leader. Something as important as the death of the Supreme Leader”explains to Financial Times John Raine, former senior British national security official and current senior advisor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who specifies that these acts of “vengeance” could take place on the sidelines of the war in the Middle East. “It will be a dish best served cold”adds the expert.

Unscrupulous methods

As the Financial Times notes, Western intelligence services have long accused Iran of campaigns of intimidation, kidnappings and even assassinations of opponents on foreign territories. To carry out their operations, they use a “economy of odd jobs”as explained by an analyst interviewed by our colleagues.

Iran uses criminal organizations to target Iranian dissidents or foreign nationals. “The structure is complex: a person in Iran contacts an intermediary, for example in Romania or Chechnya, who then manages the agents in the targeted country. This creates distance and the possibility of plausible deniability.”declares a former European security official.

Among this type of act of retaliation, the British daily cites in particular the attempted assassination of activist and presenter Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022. As Roger Macmillan, an expert in counterterrorism and security, recalls, investigators had detected contact between Iran and a person in Chechnya who coordinated agents on site.

The shooter was arrested before committing the act. More recently in Europe, several countries have tentatively accused Iran of orchestrating a wave of arsons and other attacks, including at least five attacks in the United Kingdom in a week.

Capacities weakened but not neutralized

If experts point out this risk of threats within Western countries, they point out that the war has weakened part of the Iranian security apparatus since several intelligence figures have been assassinated, thus limiting immediate operations orchestrated by Tehran abroad.

Iranian networks abroad are also heavily infiltrated by Western services, as the John Bolton affair illustrated. In 2024, Washington accused a suspected member of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of trying to organize the assassination of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser. The contact recruited by Tehran turned out to be an FBI informant.