By Pishtaz | 2025-01-10

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) has built an assassination network that operates across Europe through partnerships with criminal organizations, investigative reports reveal.

The so-called "German Network" is made up of three assassination squads, tasked with targeting Iranian dissidents, Iran International revealed in a special report published January 4.

The network's activities include a failed plot to kill Iranian singer Shahin Najafi at a theater in the German city of Hanover on September 17, 2023, the anniversary of Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Directed by the IRGC-QF's secretive Unit 840, the assassination plot was led by Iranian-German gangster Ramin Yektaparast, previously implicated in attacks on synagogues in Germany.

Unit 840 is reportedly led by IRGC commander Yazdan Mir, with senior IRGC official Mohsen Alinajad Kari Bozorg running the "German Network" from Tehran, according to Iran International.

Bozorg's team includes a "Pakistani Network" with past operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and collaborates with a Polish mafia group that specializes in bomb-laden drones, the outlet said.

In an October 22 report, German newspaper Bild revealed that German authorities were searching for members of an IRGC intelligence terror unit, which was allegedly recruiting "spies and terrorists" in Berlin.

The International Mustafa University was a particular focus of investigation, it said, noting that in 2020 the US Treasury sanctioned the university, which has branches in many countries, for IRGC recruitment and intelligence gathering.

Rising transnational repression

An interactive map of Iranian External Operations produced by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy lists 182 assassinations or assassination plots over the Iranian regime's four-decade history.

This is in addition to other types of crimes, such as surveillance, arson, cyber attacks, kidnappings and drone attacks.

Washington Institute data published in August shows that over the past five years there have been 88 Iranian-linked violent plots, with at least 14 involving criminal groups.

Britain's Security Service (MI5) has uncovered more than a dozen Iranian assassination and kidnap plots targeting Iranian journalists and dissidents in the United Kingdom.

These include the March 29, 2023, stabbing of journalist Pouria Zeraati outside his London home by suspected Eastern European proxies.

Nearly half of journalists covering Iran from the United Kingdom have reported physical or verbal harassment in the past five years, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Iran's regime has outsourced operations to criminal groups such as the Russian "Thieves in Law" and mafias from Scandinavia to South America, the Washington Post reported September 12.

"What we've got is a hostile state actor that sees the battlefield as being without borders," UK counterterrorism policing head Matt Jukes told the newspaper.