Europe’s New Battleground: Iran’s Criminal Proxy War Comes to the Streets of the West

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Britain is under sustained attack from Iran—not with armies, but through assassins, cyberweapons, and street-level criminal proxies. In a damning new report, the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) warns that Tehran has become one of the most active and unpredictable hostile actors targeting the United Kingdom today. Iran’s hybrid offensive is a campaign spanning espionage, assassination plots, disinformation, and nuclear brinkmanship. Tehran’s intelligence services hire local criminals and mafia groups to do their dirty work, also in other Western European countries, even in the Nordics.

Between January 2022 and August 2023, Iran is believed to have attempted at least 15 murders or kidnappingson UK soil. These were not random crimes but targeted attacks on dissidents, journalists, and Jewish or Israeli-linked individuals living in Britain. Among them: a 2022 plan to kill two London-based Iran International journalists, involving Balkan smugglers and Romanian contract killers, all orchestrated by Iran’s notorious Quds Force Unit 840.

Since then, over 20 plots have been thwarted by UK intelligence. Many involved untraceable cash, burner phones, and the same freelancers used by gangs for drug hits. The logic is simple: why risk IRGC operatives when a local gangster will do it for a fee and disappear? After setbacks in Lebanon and Gaza, Tehran is finding new ways to go after Israeli interests, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Iran sees such operations not as attacks on the UK but as “internal matters” being settled overseas. Tehran’s security services—particularly the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps)—have turned to local criminal gangs and organised crime networks to carry out their dirty work. It is terrorism outsourced.

“The greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran is the physical threat to regime opponents residing in the UK,” the ISC notes. The scale is now said to rival the threat level posed by Russian state activity.

Cyber Sabotage and Espionage

Iran’s intelligence services are described as “ferociously well-resourced” and unusually risk-tolerant. Tehran has become one of the most aggressive cyber actors in the world, targeting Western infrastructure, dissident networks, and critical energy sectors.

Espionage—once seen as Iran’s top threat vector to the UK—now takes a backseat only to assassination and kidnapping. Tehran uses both human agents and cyber tools, with MI5 confirming that Iranian operatives regularly attempt to infiltrate UK institutions. Iran also wages cognitive warfare online, combining “hack-and-leak” tactics with intimidation campaigns aimed at the Iranian diaspora.

Journalists from Iran International were forced to relocate after credible threats emerged. Cultural centres such as the Islamic Centre of England have also come under scrutiny for spreading extremist ideology under the guise of community work.

Iranian Terror in Central Europe

The same fingerprints—Tehran’s money, planning, and motive—appear across Europe.

  • Spain: In November 2023, former European Parliament VP Alejo Vidal-Quadras was shot in the face in Madrid. Eight suspects have been charged, including Dutch “Mocro Mafia” hitmen, in a plot linked directly to Iran’s security services. Spanish prosecutors say Iranian officials hired Moroccan gang intermediaries to subcontract the killing.
  • France: A 2023 arson and gun attack on an Iranian dissident media outlet in Paris was carried out by local drug traffickers. Their trail leads to Mehrez Ayari, a French-Tunisian hitman connected to the so-called “Sunflowers Network”—a criminal web offering contract killings to Iran in exchange for immunity and money.
  • Germany: Synagogue attacks in Essen and Bochum in 2021 involved German Hells Angels, again tied back to Iranian handlers. More recently, in July 2025, a plot targeting Jewish institutions in Berlin was dismantled, with operatives traced to Quds Force channels.
  • Netherlands: Dutch organised crime was again involved in the Vidal-Quadras shooting and is suspected in at least two additional surveillance operations targeting Israeli-linked entities.

Nordic Front: Sweden, Denmark and Iran’s Foxtrot Connection

Nowhere is the shift more disturbing than in the Nordic countries. Iran appears to have infiltrated one of Sweden’s most violent export products: the Foxtrot gang, led by Rawa Majid, aka the Kurdish Fox.

U.S. and UK sanctions allege Majid’s network has been executing Iran-directed attacks since 2023. Swedish police confirmed grenade and shooting attacks on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm and Elbit Systems facilities. Even more alarming, Iran is believed to have recruited minors aged 13–16 from Foxtrot to carry out these missions. Some had no idea they were acting on behalf of a foreign power. Others were promised protection and escape routes in exchange for violence.

In Denmark, Iran’s reach goes back even further: a 2018 attempt to assassinate leaders of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) in Ringsted was traced to an Iranian-Norwegian agent arrested in Gothenburg. The case nearly broke Danish-Iranian diplomatic relations and led to calls for EU sanctions.

While no direct plots have surfaced in Finland, Finnish authorities are reportedly monitoring transit financing and logistics connected to regional gang networks.

Proxy Militias and Global Partnerships

The report draws direct links between Iran and an array of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Kata’ib Hezbollah. Iran trains, funds, and arms these groups, often through the IRGC’s elite Quds Force.

Iran’s “forward defence” doctrine means conflict is exported abroad—to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and, increasingly, into Europe. Tehran avoids open confrontation but uses proxies to fight in the shadows.

It is also deepening its ties with Russia, China, and North Korea. Iranian support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine is described as pragmatic, not ideological: a way to stretch Western focus and buy time for Iran’s regional ambitions.

Tehran’s Calculated Shift to Criminal Proxies

By turning to mafia groups, petty criminals, and smuggling rings, Tehran gains:

  • Deniability: If a plot fails, it’s just gang warfare—not an international incident.
  • Mobility: Criminals know the terrain, the safehouses, the backdoors.
  • Plausibility: A Dutch hitman gunning someone down in Madrid? Who connects that to Tehran without deep intel?
  • Cost-efficiency: A few thousand euros to a gang member is cheaper than an international intelligence operation—and far less risky politically.

This is the very definition of “grey-zone warfare”—an area between peace and war where rules don’t apply and states act through ghosts.

Europe’s Response: Too Slow, Too Reactive?

While the threat is growing, the ISC criticises the UK Government’s response as underwhelming and disjointed. It accuses ministers of firefighting short-term crises while lacking a cohesive long-term Iran strategy.

The report slams the lack of Iran-specific expertise in Whitehall—citing a “fat lot of good” in having policy-makers who don’t speak Persian—and notes that National Security Council meetings on Iran have been rare despite the escalating threat.

Worse, the government remains paralysed over whether to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Doing so would legally implicate a quarter of Iran’s current cabinet. The ISC urges immediate legal review and a formal statement to Parliament.

Continental Europe is still dragging its feet in the issue of designating the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. While intelligence services across France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands are increasingly aligned, their political class often hesitates to confront Tehran directly—fearful of triggering diplomatic collapse, refugee consequences, or retaliatory cyberattacks. That leaves security services fighting a slow-burning war without the legal authority or resources to take proactive measures.

From Hezbollah to Hells Angels: Tehran’s New Toolkit

Iran has long relied on ideological proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. But this new model—where cartels and gangs do the killing—signals a strategic evolution. Ideology no longer matters. Loyalty is bought, not built. And violence is subcontracted.

This is warfare without uniforms, and Europe is now a front.

Iran’s criminal proxy strategy is not just a British problem. It is a Europe-wide test of political will, security coordination, and moral clarity. If Tehran continues to get away with murder in Madrid, Stockholm, London, and Berlin—with hired hands and blank passports—the message is clear: the rules-based international order is no longer enforced, not even in the heart of Europe.

And in that vacuum, gangsters become diplomats, and assassins become foreign policy.

The key recommendations of the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee are:

  • Develop a coherent, long-term Iran strategy
  • Increase Farsi-language expertise and regional analysis capacity
  • Fully assess the IRGC proscription
  • Improve MI5 resourcing
  • Boost cyber deterrence and offensive capability
  • Tighten oversight on diaspora intimidation
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