{"id":498664,"date":"2026-03-27T17:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498664\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:49:07","slug":"biker-gangs-and-hired-hands-how-iran-is-increasingly-outsourcing-its-terrorism-campaigns-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498664\/","title":{"rendered":"Biker gangs and hired hands: how Iran is increasingly outsourcing its terrorism campaigns | Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

To some it was the moment the mask slipped. Wearing an open-necked white shirt, Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was filmed last March<\/a> fondly reminiscing with an interviewer from the Tehran-based Didban Iran news website about the assassinations he had organised around Europe.<\/p>\n

There was Prince Shahriar Shafiq, the last Shah of Iran\u2019s 34-year-old nephew, who was shot twice in the head outside his mother\u2019s home in Paris in 1979.<\/p>\n

Then there was the Shah\u2019s final commander-in-chief, Gen Gholam Ali Oveissi, also shot dead in Paris, in 1984.<\/p>\n

Rafighdoost explained with a chuckle that he had additionally ordered the murder of Shapour Bakhtiar, the final prime minister under the Shah, who was killed in his Parisian home in 1991; and the stabbing to death a year later of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a dissident Iranian artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually the Basque guys,\u201d Rafighdoost said of the separatist terror group he commissioned to carry out the murders. \u201cThey were performing and no one was bothering them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protesters in New York hold aloft an image of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran\u2019s last shah, at an anti-regime march this month. Photograph: Adam Gray\/Reuters<\/p>\n

It was all coordinated via intermediaries, Rafighdoost said, including an Egyptian cleric based in Germany. The cleric sorted out the payment, creating a handy distance that shielded Iranian officials from direct attribution.<\/p>\n

The IRGC later denied the allegations. Rafighdoost\u2019s office claimed he was confused after recently undergoing brain surgery.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s firebombing of four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in Golders Green, north London, and the apparent claim of responsibility, yet to be verified, from a supposed new group said to have links to the Iranian regime, has brought a renewed focus on Iran\u2019s use of terror against dissidents and Jewish communities.<\/p>\n

With two British nationals arrested and then bailed<\/a>, police continue to keep an open mind about the possibility that no state or international actor was behind the attack.<\/p>\n

But based on its past modus operandi, experts do see the potential hallmarks of Iranian involvement in Golders Green. In comments to the Guardian<\/a>, Kevan Jones, the Labour peer who chairs the intelligence and security committee (ISC) tasked with overseeing the UK\u2019s spy agencies, described a growing trend: the use of hired hands to do the dirty work, whether it be violence, kidnappings, assassinations or surveillance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are doing this through organised crime and through individuals by paying them and that\u2019s what it is more likely to be here \u2013 if it is indeed linked to Iran,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

The UK has seen a lot of Iranian activity in recent years. In October 2025, during his annual threat assessment, the MI5 director general, Ken McCallum, stated that \u201cthe MI5 has tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots\u201d in the past year alone.<\/p>\n

Giving evidence to the ISC in the summer of 2023, the then home secretary, Suella Braverman, said Iran was using \u201cvery elusive, quite sophisticated, very brutal European-wide gangs\u201d to carry out their work.<\/p>\n

An unnamed MI5 official told the committee that Iran was \u201ccasting around for mercenaries and operatives to conduct activity \u2026 to build new alliances and relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the US, court records suggest Hells Angels biker gangs<\/a> have been deployed by the Iranian regime. Two Russian mobsters, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, were found guilty last year of plotting the murder of the Iranian American dissident Masih Alinejad. US prosecutors said in court that Iranian officials contracted the men to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home for $500,000. The ISC report<\/a> named a heroin distribution syndicate led by an Iranian narco-trafficker, Naji Sharifizindashti, as doing Iran\u2019s bidding in Europe. The regime is said to be seeking similar linkups in the UK. Two narco-gangs in Sweden were said by the authorities there to execute plots on Tehran\u2019s command.<\/p>\n

Masih Alinejad greets friends and supporters outside the federal courthouse after testifying at the trial of two men accused of allegedly plotting to kill her in New York last year. Photograph: Seth Wenig\/AP<\/p>\n

Matthew Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the US Department of the Treasury, now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said the use of proxies to carry out attacks was a longstanding tactic \u2013 but that Iran had decisively pivoted to use criminal gangs in 2018 after one of its diplomats was convicted of planning an attack on an Iranian opposition rally being staged in Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey realised at that point the utility of reasonable deniability and cut outs,\u201d Levitt said. \u201cWith criminal proxies, as long as you are willing to pay the price, which is not so much money, you are also getting someone who is not squeamish about doing things that involve violence because that is what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the Golders Green attack, Levitt said that if it did emerge that Iran was involved, it was likely not a new terror group but rather the result of a \u201ckind of criminal gig economy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Based on the open-source information available, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy\u2019s Iranian External Operations dataset found that nine out of 41 Iranian external operations they had registered between 2025 and 2026 were based in the UK.<\/p>\n

Why is there so much activity in the UK? The large Jewish community in the country and Britain\u2019s historical alliance with the US, is part of the answer, said Levitt. \u201cThe Iranians are not intimidated by law enforcement and they will go where the targets are and where they have the resources,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Colin Clarke, the executive director at the Soufan centre, a US research NGO, said the Iranians had copied the Russian playbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians had moved to the use of what they call \u2018disposable agents\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cIt sends European services chasing their tails looking for a connection to a state that might not be there, or may be two or three steps removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe downside is that these are often amateurish plots, and not particularly effective. But I do think that Iran potentially has sleeper cells, either IRGC or regime operatives, who are forward deployed, in case of an existential crisis: which is arguably where we are now. Is the US going in with ground forces the tripwire? We don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December 2023, Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, a Chechen-born Austrian citizen, was convicted<\/a> of conducting surveillance on the west London headquarters of the Iran International Persian-language TV station, declared a terrorist organisation by the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n

Asked why he had taken an interest in the building and its surroundings, Dovtaev told the Old Bailey he \u201cquite simply liked it\u201d and was \u201cin wonder at the architecture\u201d of the Chiswick business park. Iran denied any involvement.<\/p>\n

Adam Baillie, a former editor at Iran International and now its media spokesperson, said they had since moved their studios, but that the staff did not socialise for fear of an attack. \u201cThe worse it looks for the regime, the worse it is for us,\u201d he said. \u201cProxies and use of rogue elements are a key worry for counter-terrorism and the police, with regard to us certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Met are in regular touch,\u201d he added. \u201cI was told by my security boss about three weeks ago that the Met had said that I had come to their attention as someone under increased Iranian attention for cyber hacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The station is at a state of heightened alert. Two Romanian citizens are due to go on trial next month charged with wounding and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after the stabbing of the Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati in Wimbledon in 2024. They deny wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Pouria Zeraati after he was stabbed outside his home in London. Photograph: @POURIAZERAATI<\/p>\n

In the wake of the explosions in Golders Green, the Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley announced that 264 extra police officers were being deployed to protect the Jewish community in London, alongside \u201cadditional highly visible firearms patrols\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dave Rich, the head of policy at Community Security Trust, which provides security advice to the Jewish community, said this should be seen as a warning ahead of the eight-day Passover festival and that the sub-contracting to criminals under the radar was a worry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re deploying that many police officers and also extra visible armed patrols in Jewish community areas, you\u2019re not just doing that for reassurance,\u201d Rich said. \u201cYou\u2019re doing that because you think there\u2019s a real threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often say, what\u2019s the biggest danger to the Jewish community at the moment? My answer is always the biggest danger is whichever type of terrorist turns up at a synagogue that morning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To some it was the moment the mask slipped. Wearing an open-necked white shirt, Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-498664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}