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FILE - Pouria Zeraati, a presenter for independent Persian-language outlet Iran International, flashes a victory sign in a photo he posted of himself on X March 30, 2024, while hospitalized after a stabbing attack.
FILE - Pouria Zeraati, a presenter for independent Persian-language outlet Iran International, flashes a victory sign in a photo he posted of himself on X March 30, 2024, while hospitalized after a stabbing attack.

The Washington Post is reporting that the Iranian government has increased its ties with criminal networks overseas to carry out attacks on its critics in the United States and Europe.

In recent years, the report says, Iran has outsourced deadly operations and kidnappings to criminal gangs such as Hell's Angels, a notorious Russian mob network known as the "Thieves of Law," a heroin distribution syndicate led by an Iranian drug trafficker and violent criminal groups from Scandinavia to South America.

The report refers to one attack that targeted Pouria Zeraati, a journalist for the Persian-language network Iran International. She was stabbed and wounded in front of her London home in April.

The attack was attributed to Iran, but none of the attackers were Iranian, and they didn’t have significant ties to Iranian security services.

According to officials, Iran recruited criminals in Eastern Europe who arrived in the U.K. through Heathrow Airport without any problems and had been monitoring Zeraati for a long time.

VOA has reported previously on other alleged Iran plots to target critics in the U.S.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges against a 46-year-old Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, in connection with an Iranian plot to kill a politician or U.S. government official.

Earlier this year, the U.S. charged three men, one of whom was based in Iran, in a plot to murder two U.S. residents in the state of Maryland.

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department announced three members of an Eastern European criminal gang with ties to the Iranian government were indicted in a plot to kill Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American human rights activist and VOA Persian TV host.

Although the indictment did not say whether Iranian officials orchestrated the plot, U.S. law enforcement officials accused Tehran of direct involvement.

According to The Washington Post, Iran’s cooperation with criminal groups, rather than using its covert agents, represents a worrying shift in governance methods that U.S. and other Western security officials consider one of the most dangerous acts of "transnational repression" in the world.

The Post said the report is based on interviews with senior officials in more than a dozen countries, a review of hundreds of pages of criminal court records in the United States and Europe, as well as investigative documents obtained from the security services.

FILE - A missile is launched during a drill in southern Iran in this photo released by the Iranian army's website on Jan. 19, 2024. Iran on Sept. 12, 2024, summoned four European envoys to condemn their countries' accusations that Iran supplied ballistic missiles to Russia.
FILE - A missile is launched during a drill in southern Iran in this photo released by the Iranian army's website on Jan. 19, 2024. Iran on Sept. 12, 2024, summoned four European envoys to condemn their countries' accusations that Iran supplied ballistic missiles to Russia.

Iran's government on Thursday summoned the envoys of Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands over their accusations that Tehran supplied short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine.

State-run IRNA news agency reported that the country's foreign ministry summoned the envoys separately on Thursday to strongly condemn the accusations.

IRNA said the ministry also condemned Britain, France, and Germany for issuing a joint statement against Iran and called it an "unconventional and non-constructive statement."

The joint statement, issued Tuesday, condemned the alleged transfer of missiles, calling it "an escalation by both Iran and Russia" and "a direct threat to European security."

The three countries also announced new sanctions against Iran, including the cancellation of air services agreements with Iran, which will restrict Iran Air's ability to fly to the U.K. and Europe.

IRNA said that Iran's foreign ministry told the envoys that their insistence on taking such positions is seen as part of the West's ongoing hostile policy against the Iranian people. The actions will "be met with an appropriate response from the Islamic Republic of Iran."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that Iran had ignored warnings that the transfer of such weapons would be a profound escalation of the conflict.

He told reporters during a trip to London that dozens of Russian military personnel had been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 120 kilometers.

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