How Iran is shifting proxy warfare in Europe by recruiting criminal networks
Iran's growing reliance on organized local gangs may illustrate its broader plan to adapt to the evolving geopolitical landscape amid the perceived European failure to confront the new proxy warfare, which poses serious risks to the continent's security.
TEHRAN — Iran has for decades been setting up and nurturing a broad network of proxies throughout the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen. Those groups have acted on Tehran's behalf to extend its influence and ideology while engaging in asymmetric warfare against its top enemies, namely Israel and the United States.
Over the past year, however, the Islamic Republic seems to have adopted new operational strategies in Europe by employing local criminal networks to target Israeli and Jewish interests, as well as exiled Iranian opposition.
Increasingly using local gangs, Iran's intelligence apparatus and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have been upgrading their traditional tactics in a campaign that may allow Tehran deniability and anonymity while helping it circumvent the constraints and consequences of direct state-sponsored sabotage.
Back in May, Sweden's intelligence agency revealed that the Iranian government had employed two local criminal networks, known as Foxtrot and Rumba, for operations on Swedish soil. And Swedish media blamed two shooting incidents near the Israeli embassies in Stockholm and Copenhagen on the same gangs responding to orders from Tehran.
