Fresh Air

On October 26, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad exposed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF) officer responsible for overseeing global plots and attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. Sardar Ammar, Mossad said, allegedly commanded a worldwide network of about 11,000 operatives, and specified several attacks for which the network was responsible.

Among these are at least two 2024 antisemitic attacks in Australia that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pinned on Iran on August 26 – the arsons at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney in October and at Addas Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December – as well as arsons against an Israeli-owned hotel and a synagogue in Greece in May and June 2024, respectively. An incident in June 2025 involving a man arrested in Denmark for gathering intelligence on “Jewish localities and specific Jewish individuals” in Berlin on behalf of Iran was also linked to Ammar.

According to the Mossad, Ammar’s modus operandi is best described as “terror without Iranian fingerprints, high compartmentalization, recruitment of foreigners, use of criminals, and covert communications.” The Mossad also said the attacks aimed “to intimidate communities and create conditions that could lead to more serious attacks,” and claimed “dozens” of attacks have been thwarted.

The revelation of Ammar’s network, likely one of many, is part of a well-documented phenomenon stemming back to at least 2011 and the abortive plot against then-Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir.

In February 2023, Tom Tugendhat, then in his capacity as the UK’s Minister of State for Security, told the Jewish Chronicle:

We know that the Iranians are using non-traditional sources to carry out these operations, including organised criminal gangs. They are paying criminal gangs to conduct surveillance. Basically, the Iranians are using crooks based in Britain to spy for them. You can be very clear that I wouldn’t have mentioned Jewish and Israeli targets unless I had good reason to do so.

In Germany, meanwhile, the IRGC reportedly contracted a fugitive Hells Angels Motorcycle Club boss hiding from German authorities in Iran to organise three attacks, including one shooting, one firebombing and one attempted arson, targeting synagogues in the country in November 2022.

By October 8, 2024, nothing had changed in the UK, with MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum saying, “Iranian state actors make extensive use of criminals as proxies – from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks.” Two days later, the Wall Street Journal published a long, detailed investigation entitled “How Iran Uses Criminal Gangs in the West to Target Its Enemies.”

Prior to that, in May 2024, Daniel Stenling, the head of the counterespionage unit of Sweden’s domestic intelligence agency SAPO, said, “criminal networks in Sweden are used as a proxy by Iran. It is very much about planning and attempts to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish interests, goals and activities in Sweden,” adding that SAPO has seen “connections between criminal individuals in the criminal networks” – primarily tied to the warring Rumba and Foxtrot gangs in the country – “and individuals who are connected to the Iranian security services.”

These criminals carried out several attempted attacks against Israeli facilities and companies across Europe, including in Denmark, Belgium and Sweden itself, in 2024.

A year later, a BBC investigation of court documents from Turkey and the US found some of these global attacks to be linked to the so-called “Thieves-in-Law”, a network of post-Soviet criminal kingpins.

On March 21, 2025, the US Justice Department announced guilty verdicts in the cases of Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, who were hired by the IRGC to murder Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in the US for US $500,000. The men were “high-ranking members of an Eastern European organized crime group.” Both were sentenced on October 30.

That plot was also foiled due to extreme amateurishness by these criminals for hire.

Finally, on July 31, a joint statement by Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US read:

We are united in our opposition to the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty.  These Services are increasingly collaborating with international criminal organisations to target journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America. This is unacceptable.

It’s not clear why Australia didn’t sign this statement, given that law enforcement sources told the Sydney Morning Herald that Iran’s partnership with outlaw bikie gangs in Australia dates back several years. In addition, sources told Sky News that the Albanese Government was aware for months prior to his announcement that Iran may have been linked to the two antisemitic arson attacks.

But while Iran’s long-standing global links to criminal networks to conduct surveillance, harassment or attacks demonstrate malign intent and the desire for deniability, it also reflects Iran’s extreme weakness and desperation, which forces it to rely on unknown freelancers, incompetent criminals and organised crime groups already penetrated by local law enforcement and domestic intelligence agencies.

This incompetence is visible in the illiterate, amusing texts between Nomad bikie chapter President Sayed Moosawi and the random criminals he hired to conduct the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen arson, especially after they got confused – twice! – and tried to set fire to the Curly Lewis Brewery, instead.

It is also evident in the fact that those hired by crime boss Kazem Hamad, deported to Iraq in 2023, to set the Adass synagogue alight in Melbourne, used the same stolen blue Volkswagen Golf – described by police as a “communal crime car” – to commit multiple attacks unrelated to Jews or Israel, including on the same day as the Adass arson.

The IRGC has been forced to rely on such people because its own direct global terrorism apparatus has been neutralised by Israel for more than a decade, thanks to Israel’s “comprehensive intelligence penetration of the IRGC,” as I wrote in July 2022.

The best it could achieve by this method in Australia were the two arson attacks, and, if and when other attacks are linked to Iran, probably some graffiti. This is not to downplay the societal impact these incidents have had, or the terror experienced by the local Jewish communities, only to show that the IRGC is currently not capable of more serious attacks in this country.

In August 2022, I described this freelancing phenomenon and the IRGC’s “desperation” and “abysmal tradecraft”, and the fact that its plots are “entirely ad hoc, involving neither concrete plans nor direct involvement.”

“Instead,” I wrote, “IRGC operatives or sometimes even their relatives try to hire anonymous third parties, giving them the target and leaving the formation and execution of the plan up to that third party.”

The August 2022 piece concluded, “Rather than aiming for sophisticated plots, the exposed plans indicate that the IRGC-QF and [Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence] seem to be throwing as many impromptu plots at the wall as they can to see if any stick.”

Following the recent Mossad revelations, it seems little has changed.