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Iran’s Assassination Plots Against Jews Persist Despite the West’s Leniency on Regime
Workers work to convert the Eiffel Tower Stadium from the beach volleyball venue to the Paralympic blind football venue for the coming Paris 2024 Paralympic Games on Aug. 18, 2024. Photo: Reuters
The French police recently charged a French-Algerian dual citizen and his partner for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Israelis and Jews in Paris, Munich, and Berlin — all at the behest of Iran.
Iran’s efforts to murder Jews overseas demonstrates how the regime in Tehran has intensified its support for terrorism and assassination plots in the West, despite outreach and economic concessions by the United States and Europe.
The French General Directorate for Internal Security claimed on September 8 that Iran had planned to assassinate some seven individuals across Europe as part of a plot to “strike targeted civilians” to “create insecurity for the opposition” to Tehran’s regime “from within the Jewish/Israeli community.”
The plot aimed to intimidate the Islamic Republic’s opponents, in order to dissuade them from engaging in activism against the clerical dictatorship.
The Islamic Republic has long cultivated and exploited connections to criminal networks, which are behind a recent wave of violent plots targeting Jewish communities and Iranian dissidents across Europe and the United States.
The networks include the Hells Angels biker gang in Germany, the Eastern European criminal organization known as the Organization, and the Swedish Foxtrot and Rumba organized crime networks.
Troublingly, while the regime’s assassinations — often implemented covertly by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) — date to the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979, recent years have seen a marked escalation of the theocracy’s efforts.
The Israeli Mossad recently reported that Iran has facilitated a string of terror attacks on Israeli embassies across Europe by capitalizing on the global antisemitic wave after the Hamas terror attacks of October 7. The Mossad stated that Tehran was behind a grenade attack against Israel’s embassy in Belgium in May 2024. Similarly, Swedish intelligence confirmed in May 2024 that Iran had orchestrated the foiled bombing attack against the Israeli embassy in Stockholm earlier this year.
Despite the Islamic Republic’s claims of differentiating between Jews and Zionists, the regime’s foreign plots have consistently targeted Jewish communities independent from Israel.
For instance, Germany concluded that Tehran had plotted the attempted arson attack on a synagogue in Dusseldorf in 2022.
Iranian dissidents, anti-regime activists, and journalists have also fallen victim to Tehran’s transnational attacks. Most notably, in 2018, a Belgium court convicted the Vienna-based Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi for a plot to bomb the annual convention of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Belgian authorities said that Assadi was an Iranian intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover, carrying out orders from the MOI.
Tehran’s reach has even extended to the United States, evidenced by foiled plots to assassinate and kidnap the New York-based Masih Alinejad — an Iranian-American dissident and journalist who was the target of a thwarted kidnapping attempt by Iranian intelligence services in 2021.
In 2023, the US Department of Justice charged three men with ties to Iran and to an Eastern European criminal network who were plotting to assassinate Alinejad in her New York home in 2022.
Iran also facilitated the failed 2022 assassination attempt in New York against Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, a novel that had prompted Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to issue a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death. The US District Court in Buffalo claimed that the perpetrator, who stabbed Rushdie multiple times, provided “material support and resources” to the Tehran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah between September 2020 and the day of the attack.
The European Union should respond to these attacks by designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity, like the United States did in 2019.
Furthermore, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France should reinstate UN sanctions on Iran by triggering the snapback process in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In a letter dated April 10, 2023, some 130 members of the US House of Representatives urged the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, to designate the IRGC as a terrorist entity. A month earlier, 12 members of the US Senate sent a letter with the same message to Borrell. At long last, he needs to listen to them.
Until then, the United States must maintain this pressure to ensure that Washington and Europe pose a unified stance against Tehran’s malign ambitions. At the same time, Washington should reimpose maximum economic pressure on Iran in order to send the regime a message that it will pay a significant price for its violence. After decades of assassinations, whether completed or attempted, there is no more time to waste.
Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional malign influence. Follow him on X @JanatanSayeh.
The post Iran’s Assassination Plots Against Jews Persist Despite the West’s Leniency on Regime first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.