The Mossad stated on Oct. 26, 2025, that Iranian operative Sardar Amar was behind antisemitic attacks in Australia and European countries. Photo: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office

Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad has revealed that an Iranian commander directed multiple foiled attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide over the past two years, exposing what it described as Iran’s campaign of global terrorism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday released a statement on behalf of the Mossad identifying Sardar Amar — a senior figure in the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a powerful Iranian military force and internationally designated terrorist organization — as the man responsible for overseeing and coordinating the thwarted plots.

“Amidst the Iranian regime’s persistent attempts to promote terrorism against Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide, the Mossad is revealing new details for the first time about those responsible for major attempted attacks thwarted in Australia, Greece, and Germany in 2024-2025,” the statement read.

“Since the events of Oct. 7, Iran has expanded its efforts to target Israeli and Jewish interests worldwide,” the statement continued, referring to Iran-backed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. “Thanks to intensive operations by the Mossad, together with intelligence and security agencies in Israel and around the world, dozens of attack channels promoted by Iran have been thwarted. These counter-terrorism operations have saved many lives and enabled investigative and legal steps to be taken against those involved in terrorism.”

The Mossad explained that “one of the prominent mechanisms now being exposed for the first time is that of Sardar Amar, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, who heads Corps 11,000 under the command of Ismail Qa’ani, commander of the Quds Force.”

Under Amar’s command, according to Israel, “a significant mechanism was established to promote attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets both in Israel and abroad. This mechanism is directly responsible for the attempted attacks exposed in Greece, Australia, and Germany in the past year alone, and its numerous failures led to the wave of arrests and its exposure.”

The Mossad noted some of the diplomatic consequences that Iran has faced for its aggression, including the expulsion of its ambassador from Australia and the summoning of its top diplomat in Germany for reprimand.

“These unprecedented steps are intended to send a clear message of zero tolerance for terrorist activity on their soil,” the statement continued.

In August, Australia announced that Iran had orchestrated two antisemitic arson attacks in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne, targeting a kosher restaurant and a synagogue, respectively.

The Algemeiner has reported extensively on the antisemitic crime wave in Australia over the past year and officials’ suspicions of its foreign origins.

In January, Australia Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said his investigators had determined that “criminals-for-hire may be behind some incidents.” He said that his team had then reviewed “whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs” and that “we are looking at if — or how — they have been paid, for example in cryptocurrency, which can take longer to identify.”

On Aug. 27, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke described the terrorism methodology in an interview, saying that “you have a series of intermediaries so that people performing different actions don’t in fact know who is directing them or don’t necessarily know who is directing them.”

The Mossad explained that Iran has used terrorism for years to target Israelis and Jews abroad.

“For years, the Iranian regime has viewed terrorism as a tool to exact a price from Israel by harming innocent people worldwide, without paying military, diplomatic, or economic costs,” the agency said in its statement. “Under this logic, the terrorist bodies operate while maintaining plausible deniability and a separation between the violent activity and Iran. The first-time exposure of Sardar Amar’s attack mechanism as being behind the attempted attacks in Greece, Germany, and Australia proves the failed management of the mechanism in its efforts and undermines the Iranian attempts to operate covertly, beneath the radar.”

The United Kingdom also spoke out this month about the severity of the Iranian espionage threat. On Oct. 16, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum revealed a 35 percent increase in individuals investigated for foreign spy penetration, naming Russia and Iran as behind them, with some of the plots uncovered as “potentially lethal.”

On Oct. 20, Russia announced its intent to continue strengthening ties with Iran, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov proclaiming that the country is “definitely ready to expand cooperation with Iran in all areas. Iran is our partner, and our relations are developing very dynamically.”

Illustrative: Pro-Hamas activists at Dartmouth College. Photo: New Deal Coalition/Instagram.

Incidents of campus antisemitism continue to rise around the world, as revealed in a new monthly report published by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) civil rights organization.

Published by the group’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC), the report said CAM recorded 53 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in the month of September, a 178 percent increase over the previous month, when 19 were recorded despite students being present on campus during the summer holiday.

“This surge reflects the resumption of the academic year and the persistent problem of antisemitism at colleges and university,” the report said. “In France, students at Sorbonne University in Paris discussed a targeted shooting attack against Jewish students at the school. In Argentina, students at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba seized control of parts of the campus, protesting Israel’s ‘genocide’ of the Palestinians.”

The report added that the US saw 38 campus antisemitism incidents in September, several of which The Algemeiner reported.

In upstate New York, for example, law enforcement agencies filed hate crime charges against two Syracuse University students who they say forcefully gained entry into a Jewish fraternity’s off-campus house during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and heaved a bag of pork at a wall, causing its contents to splatter across the floor.

Allen Groves, the university’s chief officer of student experience, said in a statement issued on behalf of the school that law enforcement captured the suspects just moments after they attempted to abscond to an unknown location in a getaway car. He added that they will face disciplinary charges brought by the school in addition to pending criminal penalties.

In Hanover, New Hampshire, an unknown person or group graffitied a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, outside the dormitory of a Jewish student at Dartmouth College.

The graffitiing of a swastika as a method of intimidation and expression of hate on the campus shocked Dartmouth;s Jewish community and stood out for being perpetrated only days before Jews across the US and the world observed Rosh Hashanah.

“With Jewish high holidays around the corner, our community feels the impact of this crime even more profoundly,” Ruby Benjamin, a Jewish Dartmouth student and president of the campus Chabad, told The Dartmouth, the college’s official student newspaper. “In a time that should be marked with joy, we are forced to look hatred in the eye. While we are disgusted by yesterday’s events, we are not afraid. Today, as always, we stand together as a strong community.”

In Manhattan, New York, an unknown person graffitied antisemitic messages inside the Weinstein residence hall at New York University, prompting school president Linda Mills to issue a statement condemning antisemitism and imploring students to uphold the institution’s values.

The outrages continued into the month of October. Just last week, Cornell University took center stage in another campus antisemitism outrage when its student newspaper published an anti-Zionist opinion piece which promoted Holocaust inversion by melding a Nazi symbol with the Star of David.

Written by Karim-Aly Assam, the article implied an equivalence of Israel’s military objective to eradicate Hamas from Gaza with the Nazi genocide of Jews across Europe during World War II, a trope which anti-Israel activists and antisemites traffic to foster negative public opinion against Israel’s efforts to secure its borders and quell jihadist activity in the Palestinian territories.

The tactic — Holocaust inversion — is one part of a triad of Holocaust-skepticism, the other two components of which are “denial” and “distortion” — used to defame Jews and deny that they are and have been victims of hatred. Once reserved to neo-Nazi media, Holocaust inversion, experts say, is being increasingly embraced by other more mainstream segments of society.

A new survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) found that staff and faculty are accelerating the antisemitism crisis on US college campuses by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.

The survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it. Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).

Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration.

“What we’re seeing is a betrayal of the fundamental principles of academic freedom and collegiality,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement when the report was released. “Jewish faculty are being forced to hide their identities, excluded from professional opportunities, and told by their own colleagues what constitutes antisemitism — even as they experience it firsthand. This hostile environment is driving talented educators and researchers away from careers they’ve dedicated their lives to building.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Louis Theroux in conversation with Bobby Vylan on the Oct. 24, 2025, episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast.” Photo: YouTube screenshot

The frontman of the British punk rap duo Bob Vylan responded on Sunday to the decision by British Airways to withdraw sponsorship from Louis Theroux’s podcast following his interview with the musician, who said he did not regret his “death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” chant at the Glastonbury Festival and would do it again.

A spokesperson for British Airways told PA Media that content in the interview “clearly breaches our sponsorship policy in relation to politically sensitive or controversial subject matters.”

“We and our third-party media agency have processes in place to ensure these issues don’t occur and we’re investigating how this happened,” added the spokesperson. “Our sponsorship of the series has now been paused, and the advert has been removed.”

Bob Vylan frontman Bobby Vylan, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, called the move a “scare tactic” in a post on X. “I went on the podcast and as hard as the lobby groups and media tried, they couldn’t twist anything I said. So, they have resorted to lobbying for Louis’ sponsorship to be pulled in an attempt to scare others out of giving me a platform.”

“Their hope to further vilify me couldn’t run, so they target Louis to make an example for sitting with me,” he wrote in separate posts. “The lobby groups, the British government, and media are determined to make an example of me, all because I dare to want an end to a genocidal occupying force guilty of war crimes.”

Robinson-Foster was a guest on Theroux’s podcast last week and talked in great length about the “death, death to the IDF” chant that he led at Glastonbury in June in Somerset, England. The musician told the podcast host and documentarian that he is “not regretful of it at all” and “would do it again tomorrow, [and] twice on Sundays.” He also called “death to the IDF” a “perfect chant.”

“The subsequent backlash that I’ve faced — it’s minimal,” he added. “It’s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through. If that can be my contribution and if I can have my Palestinian friends and people that I meet from Palestine, that have had to flee, that have lost members in double digits of their family and they can say, ‘Yo, your chant, I love it.’ Or ‘it gave me a breath of fresh air or whatever’ – and I don’t want to overstate the importance of the chant. That’s not what I’m trying to do – but if I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for. They’re the people that I’m being vocal for.”

Robinson-Foster also claimed that Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set was praised and called “fantastic” by employees of the BBC, which live streamed the Glastonbury Festival. The BBC apologized for live streaming Bob Vylan’s “offensive and deplorable behavior” and BBC chairman Samir Shah separately apologized for the network’s mistake in broadcasting the band’s “unconscionable antisemitic views.” The anti-IDF chant was even condemned by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

After the Glastonbury incident, the United Talent Agency dropped Bob Vylan as its client, and the band had several concerts and festival performances canceled. Bob Vylan had their US visas revoked and are currently under criminal investigation in the UK because of the chant. There was a recorded rise in antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom the day after Bob Vylan’s anti-IDF chant at Glastonbury, but Robinson-Foster told Theroux last week he does not believe he contributed to creating “an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community” in the UK following the festival.

The vocalist insisted in a social media post last month “there is nothing antisemitic or criminal about anything I said at Glastonbury.” Bob Vylan previously said in a statement on Instagram that the “death to the IDF” chant was a call “for the dismantling of a violent military machine.”

Robinson-Foster called for violence against Zionists during a September concert in Amsterdam, and while performing in Spain over the summer, he encouraged “armed resistance” against the IDF and proclaimed, “Down with Israel.”