Thursday, August 8, 2024

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY - INTRODUCING THE IRANIAN EXTERNAL OPERATIONS INTERACTIVE MAP AND TIMELINE

 MATTHEW LEVITT

©2024 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. All rights reserved.


INTRODUCING

THE IRANIAN EXTERNAL OPERATIONS

INTERACTIVE MAP AND TIMELINE


2 | THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY


MATTHEW LEVITT


Over the past forty-five years, agents and proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran have targeted Iranian dissidents and journalists, diplomats from  countries opposed to Iranian policies, as well as Israelis and Jews inassassination plots, attempted abductions, intimidation campaigns, andsurveillance operations.

 Iran has carried out these operations around the world,in countries with both strong and weak law enforcement, intelligence, and  border control agencies. And it has done so consistently, including incircumstances when taking such actions could undermine Iranian diplomatic efforts, such as negotiations over the country’s nuclear program. In recent years, Iranian reliance onthese external operations as tools of intimidation, revenge, and deterrence has spiked, leading governments from the United States,1 Britain,2 and Sweden,3 among others, to decry the regime’s aggressive plots on foreign soil.


Iran has pursued such plots since the earliest days

after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. One of the first

such cases on U.S. soil occurred in July 1980, when

Iranian agents recruited David Belfield, aka Dawud

Salahuddin, an American convert to Shia Islam,

to assassinate former Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar

Tabatabai in Bethesda, Maryland.4 Later, in a 1997

briefing, Ambassador Philip Wilcox, the U.S. State

Department’s coordinator for counterterorrism,

stated that “since 1990, we estimate—and indeed,

we have solid information—that Iran is responsible

for over 50 murders of political dissidents and

others overseas.”5

The current map tool shines a bright spotlight on

activities Iran goes to great lengths to obfuscate,

using cutouts such as proxy groups and criminals

to complement its own stable of operatives and

diplomats to engage in murder, abduction, intimidation, 

and surveillance around the world. The

map is not a comprehensive compilation of Iranian

external operations, however, since many of these

remain classified. For example, the map does not

include the more than fifty murder plots between

1990 and 1997 referenced by Ambassador Wilcox.

But it does represent the first open-source repository 

of Iranian external operations of its kind, and

officials who cover these matters and have access

to classified sources—from the United States to

Europe to the Middle East—have confirmed that

the findings here parallel their own.6

This is an interactive project to which entries will

be added on an ongoing basis, both to keep up

with current events and to backfill past entries as

information and source material become public.


ORIGIN STORY


In July 2018, an Iranian diplomat partnered with

three Iranian operatives in a plot to bomb the

annual convention, near Paris, of the National

Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of

the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group.

The plot was thwarted, and all four conspirators

were arrested, tried, and sentenced for their roles

in an attack that could have killed many people,

including several senior current and former U.S.

officials who attended.7 The plotters, who engaged

iin operational activities in at least five European

countries, were undeterred from carrying out a

potentially spectacular strike in Western Europe.8

In the wake of this plot, U.S. officials sought to

mobilize partners to counter Iran’s support for

terrorism around the world. A senior State

Department official—after noting the role of an

Austria-based Iranian diplomat in the Paris bomb

plot—summarized Washington’s concerns in a

press briefing:

[The] United States is urging all nations to

carefully examine diplomats in Iranian

embassies to ensure their countries’ own

security. If Iran can plot bomb attacks in

Paris, they can plot attacks anywhere in the

world, and we urge all nations to be vigilant

about Iran using embassies as diplomatic

cover to plot terrorist attacks.9

The Paris plot was a turning point for many U.S.

and European officials, in part because it was not

a standalone event. The previous month, in June

2018, the Dutch government expelled two Iranian

diplomats following an intelligence investigation

into an attack on an Iranian Arab activist in

Amsterdam.10 And in March 2018, Albanian

authorities charged two Iranian operatives with

terrorism following a German raid two months

earlier on several residences tied to suspected

Iranian agents.11 Within weeks of the thwarted

Paris plot, an article by this author in CTC Sentinel,

“Iran’s Deadly Diplomats,” documented Iran’s long

history of carrying out such attacks and the roles

played by Iranian diplomats, intelligence operatives

under diplomatic cover, and the Iranian Foreign

Ministry.12 At the time, before the Paris plotters

were tried and convicted, the article concluded that

“as authorities in Austria, Belgium, France, and

Germany dig deeper into the Assadi affair [a

reference to Vienna-based Iranian diplomat/

operative Assadollah Assadi], they are likely to

determine fairly quickly, as investigators invariably

did in previous Iranian plots, that these are not

rogue actions, but the actions of a rogue regime.”13

Shortly thereafter, several U.S. and European

governments reached out asking for more

information on the history of Iranian external

operations. Eager for informed analysis, they had

been frustrated by the lack of unclassified data

about past Iranian plots. Policymakers were looking

for ways to deter Iran from continuing to carry out

such plots, while intelligence and law enforcement

agencies sought trend analysis to understand where,

when, and why Iran conducts such operations along

with details on operatives and targets.

What followed was a five-year research project

that resulted in a unique, unclassified data set

encompassing Iran’s external operations. Entries

were based on available open-source data, but also

relied on consultation with government experts

in cases of insufficient clarity or sourcing. Many

cases have yet to be included for lack of sufficient

sourcing.

The first research product based on the data set,

“Trends in Iranian External Assassination,

Surveillance, and Abdduction Plots," was published

in CTC Sentinel in February 2022.14 Additional

articles followed,15 as well as requests from

journalists to leverage the data set for stories on

Iranian external operations.16 Now, even as more

analytical pieces remain to be published, the

public is welcome to dig in to this open-access

resource as well.


THE MAP

Before exploring the analytical potential of the

Iranian External Operations Map and Timeline, one

must note its primary limitation—that of a publicly

available, open-source information repository

documenting the covert activities of a state actor

(Iran) as well as a designated terrorist organization

(the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). This

collection of court records, interviews, video

documentation, and other unclassified primary

material about Iran’s external operations is one

of the largest of its kind, but it is by definition

incomplete; therefore, users should be careful not

to draw conclusions from the map or timeline as

to what operations Iran did or did not carry out at

a particular time or in a given place. Several of the

older entries, particularly those that took place

in Europe in the years immediately following the

Islamic Revolution, may list only a victim or target’s

name and the location of an assassination or

kidnapping plot, but that does not make them any

less significant than more current operations with

a wealth of publicly available unclassified details.

Limitations aside, this project represents a major

contribution to the understanding of Iran’s external

plots against those it considers enemies—political

dissidents, journalists, Israelis, Jews, former Iranian

officials, Americans, and others. Its analytic potential

lies not only in its collection of much of the publicly

documented information available on Iranian

assassinations, kidnappings, surveillance, and

intimidation operations, but also in its constant

evolution as more sources are added, plots

uncovered, and entries updated. The information

contained in this interactive resource allows users

to understand the geographic and temporal range

of Iranian external operations, in addition to the

types of perpetrators conducting these plots and 

the victims they most frequently target..


Consider a few key themes:


• Two major spikes in Iranian external

operational activity. Patterns in the data reveal

two events that led to a significant increase in

external operations: the 1979 Islamic Revolution

and the January 2020 targeted killing of IRGC

Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani. In the

decade following the rise of the Islamic Republic,

the data reveals at least fourteen unique Iranian

external operations, largely targeting former

shah-era officials who fled Iran for Europe.

The Iranian external operations data set also

documents at least 116 unique operations since

Soleimani’s killing, meaning that more than half

of the documented operations have taken place in

the past four years.


• Reliance on hired criminals and locals to

conduct surveillance and execute plots. Iran

frequently turns to criminal groups, including

the Hells Angels biker gang—as well as hit men,

drug traffickers, and even private investigators—

to conduct surveillance operations, organize

kidnappings, and commit assassinations.

• Use of diplomats to provide official cover

for illicit activities. Since the mid-1980s,

Iran has been using government officials and

diplomats posted in embassies abroad to

provide diplomatic immunity to those carrying

out external operations. Take the cases of Kazem

Rajavi, who was assassinated in 1990, leading to

the attempted arrest of no fewer than thirteen

Iranians with diplomatic passports;17 Assadollah

Assadi, the diplomat/explosives smuggler who

was arrested in 2018;18 or Masoud Vardanjani,

who was assassinated in 2019.19

• Targeting of those who speak out against the

Iranian regime. Iranian external operations

largely target individuals and groups seen as

enemies or critics of the Islamic Republic,

including activists like Masih Alinejad, media

outlets like Iran International, and dissident

political organizations like MEK. 


Besides highlighting broad trends over the past

four decades, the map provides insight into littleknown 

Iranian links to criminal plots across the

globe, including an IRGC effort to build up a small

rebel group in the Central African Republic, a

German-Afghan national’s Iranian espionage

activities while working as a translator for the

German army in Afghanistan, and a plot by two

alleged Afghan nationals to assassinate three

Swedish Jews, among them a dual U.S. citizen.


This tool also reveals new details in more wellknown cases, 

including links between known Iranian drug trafficker and 

Ministry of Intelligenceoperative Naji Ibrahim Sharifi Zindashti and 

atleast half a dozen assassination plots spanning

the globe; the involvement of a senior commander

in the IRGC’s Syria-based Unit 840 in a 2022 plot to

assassinate former U.S. secretary of state Mike

Pompeo and former national security advisor John

Bolton; and connections between three late-2022

attacks on Jewish targets in Germany and an Iranbased 

Hells Angels member wanted in connection

with the reported murder of a fellow rock band

member in Tehran in April 2024.


Creating this tool required attention by many people

to a range of details, from the design of the user

interface and interactive feature set to even more

granular decisions about coding and the relationships 

between entries and known actors. Here is

how some of these details were addressed:


1. Spellings. The Iranian External Operations Map

typically adopts the spelling of individuals and

entities used in government documents. Yet agencies

occasionally vary their transliterations of Arabic

or Persian names, and in these situations the text

adheres to the spelling used in the source document

(e.g., a criminal indictment or Treasury Department

designation). The map’s search feature takes into

account all known documented spellings of an

individual or organization’s name. For example,

if an individual’s first name is spelled “Mohammed,”

“Mohamed,” and “Muhammed” across three

different sources, all three spelling variations will

link to the same entry concerning that individual.


2. Document repository and attached primary

sources. Wherever possible, the entries include

primary sources, such as criminal complaints,

indictments, declassified CIA reports, trial

testimony, Rewards for Justice announcements,

Treasury Department designations, government reports 

and press releases, and links to NGO reports. Some 

entries include documents (e.g.,indictments from foreign countries) 

that have been translated from their original languages;

these documents are intended for reference only

and users are encouraged to examine an entry’s

original sources, which are always included

alongside the translated copy when available.

Additionally, where relevant, key documents

such as an indictment or Treasury Department

designation are used as the header image for an

entry to highlight a main source. Entries with

multiple associated documents will have a blue

arrow indicating that users can click through

attached PDFs, as well as a “View document”

button that will enlarge an attached PDF or

photograph. For entries where photographs clearly

illustrate the contents, photos will be included as

the header, and PDFs—if applicable—can be viewed

in a “Documents” dropdown box at the bottom of

the entry. Additional sources, including news

articles and other secondary materials, are

available in the dropdown box labeled “Sources.”


3. Dates for incidents. Because this tool functions

as both a map and an interactive timeline, each

event is associated with a date and a set of geographic

coordinates. When a specific date is unavailable,

entries provide the greatest specificity possible:

e.g., November 2022, Fall 2022, or simply 2022 if

no further identifying information can be found.

In instances where sources provide no clues to the

date of illicit activity, the date of the source will be

used and noted in the entry description.

When the only information available is the year,

that entry will appear on the timeline at the earliest

possible date (e.g., January 1, 2022, for a listing of

2022), even as the date in the text box will reflect

solely known information (2022). Users can filter

for events during a specific period by adjusting the

sliding timeline on the bottom of the page, and can

view events during a specific year by clicking on

that year. Filtering entries by time period will open

up a sidebar listing all entries relevant to a user’s

filtered search.

4. Dates for judicial actions. Wherever possible,

entries will reference an individual’s first contact

with law enforcement. Ideally, judicial actions will

be categorized as arrests, but in instances where

the date of an individual’s initial arrest is unknown,

an entry will be tagged as an indictment. Details

concerning an individual’s trial, sentencing, or

deportation are included in this same entry, which

is periodically updated as new information becomes

publicly available.


In cases where an individual’s extradition occurs

shortly after their arrest, that information is

included in a single entry detailing both the arrest

and subsequent extradition to a third country.

For example, Rafat Amirov was arrested in a third

country, extradited to the United States on

January 26, 2023, and then charged in a New York

court the following day in connection with a 2022

plot to assassinate Masih Alinejad; all of this

information is included in one entry tagged as

both “arrest” and “indictment.” But Polad Omarov,

charged on the same day as Amirov, was not

extradited to the United States from the Czech

Republic until February 2024; this new information

warranted a separate entry due to the length of

time between Omarov’s indictment and arrest.

When multiple entries are associated with a single

plot, they will be listed in a dropdown box labeled

“See also” at the bottom of a given entry and sorted

by appropriate noun tags (e.g., individuals, organizations, businesses).


5. Cross-coding of entries and colored dots on

the map. The map’s category filters, shown in six

colored boxes atop the screen, allow users to filter

by type of external operations plot, counterterrorism

action, or operational finance and logistics action,

as well as by specific country, perpetrator, and

target. Selecting one or multiple filters will limit

the dots that appear on the map itself, as well as

the events listed in the collapsible sidebar. Users

may notice that selecting the “Assassination”

subcategory under “Plots and Attacks” still leaves

many blue and turquoise dots on the map; this is

not an error but instead reflects the cross-coding

of entries under multiple categories to enhance

searchability. For example, the entry “Manssor

Arbabsiar Transfers Money to Fund Saudi

Ambassador’s Assassination” is coded primarily as

a case of “Finance” under “Finance and Logistics”

(turquoise), but is listed secondarily as an

“Assassination” under “Plots and Attacks”

(orange) due to Arbabsiar’s role in funding an

attempted hit on the Saudi ambassador to the

United States, Adel al-Jubeir.

6. Searching by country and other filters. The

mapping tool includes several additional filters to

reflect the target and perpetrator set involved in

Iranian external operations globally and to give

users a fuller picture of how the Iranian regime

preys upon its perceived enemies using a diverse

operational toolkit. The “Country” filter allows

users to search for plots taking place in a specific

country and filter out entries that do not meet the

search criteria. Users may notice, however, that

when selecting “United Kingdom,” events still

appear in multiple countries, including Albania,

Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates; remaining

dots represent cases linked to Britain by association

(explained below in point 9). Users should note that

the “Country” filter does not allow users to search

by region or autonomous administration—e.g.,

Kurdistan, Scotland, northeast Syria, the Middle East.


7. Combining of filters. This interactive tool is

particularly powerful when filters are combined to

produce targeted search queries. For example, users

can manipulate the timeline to display all events

taking place since the beginning of 2020, then select

the “Assassination” and “Kidnapping” filters under

the “Plots and Attacks” main category, and afterward 

narrow results by activating the

“Iranian dissidents” filter under “Target.”


8. Approach to geolocation. Each event is

geolocated as precisely as possible given the

available information, and pinned to a country’s

capital when more specific geographical information is unknown. 

While capital cities serve as both stand-ins and actual locations 

for various entries,the most specific confirmed information is

denotedin the entry text (e.g., London, United Kingdom v.

United Kingdom). Additionally, the geolocation is

typically determined by the activity rather than

the site of a report or designation’s publication.

For example, “Treasury Department Designates

Mohammed Reza Ansari” is geolocated to Damascus,

Syria, where Ansari is accused of heading an IRGC

Qods Force unit, and linked to Washington DC,

where he allegedly helped orchestrate assassination

plots targeting John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.


A note on Iran: While this map includes only

external operations (i.e., those taking place outside

Iran), a number of entries are geolocated to Tehran

or other locations inside Iran. This is the case

when an individual within Iran helps orchestrate a

plot in another country (see, e.g., “IRGC Hires

Fugitive Biker Gang Leader to Organize Attacks

on Synagogues in Germany”), as well as when

individuals travel to or are recruited in Iran (see

“Majid Ghorbani Travels to Iran”), when Iran

releases statements pertaining to kidnapping or

assassination plots (see “Iran Executes SwedishIranian National Habib Chaab”), and when

counterterrorism operations take place on Iranian

soil (see “Gunmen Kill IRGC-QF Officer Hassan

Sayyad Khodaei in Tehran”).


9. Linked and associated locations. While all

entries are pinned to one “primary” location, some

cases are more complex and involve linked or associated locations. 

Locations are connected linearly

in the presence of known travel routes or financial

flows, while spider lines demonstrate a radial connection. 

These features allow users to understand

the geographic breadth of Iran’s external operations

and visualize the interconnectedness among many

of these plots. “Linked” locations are those with

direct geographical ties to an entry; spider lines

show the direction of travel (see “Majid Ghorbani

Travels to Iran”) or a direct link to a plot in a secondary 

location (see “Damion Patrick John Ryan

Indicted for Plotting to Assassinate Two Maryland

Residents”). When used to indicate travel, spider

lines are often configured linearly, moving from one

location to another rather than radiating outward

from a central location. In cases of more complicated travel 

patterns, multiple lines are used toindicate direction of travel 

(see “Dawud Salahuddin Flees to Iran”).



“Associated” map locations are portrayed as gray

dots superimposed on colored dots, but are not

physically connected to an entry with spider lines—

these represent a looser connection to a secondary

location. For example, the 1989 assassination

attempt against Salman Rushdie took place in

London, with Cote d’Ivoire, Lebanon, and the

Netherlands listed as “associated” locations to

illustrate Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh’s travel route

from West Africa to Britain. Associated locations

may also be used to highlight operatives’ or

victims’ nationalities or passport countries (see

“Ali Mansouri Arrested for Espionage”), locations

of operatives’ handlers (see “Thaer Shafut Indicted

for Developing Iranian Espionage Network in West

Bank”), or suspected links to separate plots (see

“Mohammad Mehdi Mozayyani Investigated for

Plotting Assassinations Against Iranian Dissidents

in Britain”). Users should note that entries may

have both linked and associated locations,

including multiple instances of each.


10. Decoupling dots from activity volume. A dot

is not necessarily indicative of the volume of

activity at one given set of coordinates. For example,

the map currently has twenty-nine entries whose

primary, linked, or associated location is tagged as

“Jerusalem, Israel”—those twenty-nine entries are

represented with a single dot. To view all the entries

associated with one particular location, users can

click on a city dot to activate a pop-up window that

displays the titles of all entries associated with a

location.

11. Recent developments. This resource is

continuously updated as news stories break,

reports are declassified, and insights into historical

plots emerge. The upper left-hand corner of the

map provides a running tally of entries included in

the map. Clicking “Last updated” will call up a list

of updated events sorted in reverse chronological

order. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people contributed, in one way or another, to the creation of this interactive map and the data set onwhich it is based.

I had the benefit of meeting with a wide range of subject-matter experts for this project, from academics andjournalists to victims of Iranian external operations and the agents and policymakers working to disrupt suchplots. These meetings have taken place in Washington DC and cities across the United States where officialsare overseeing cases in which Iran and its agents have targeted people, as well as cities around the world where officials are doing the same.

This product is the fruit of many people’s labor, but the following individuals truly stand out. The designand technical teams at International Mapping have been fantastic partners, and I am very grateful to them forhelping me transform this idea into an actual product—special thanks to Kevin Danaher and Mikael Ems. Themap is attractive, user-friendly, and intuitive thanks to the vision of The Washington Institute’s publicationsdirector, Maria Radacsi. Jason Warshof and Miriam Himmelfarb provided expert editing of each map entry.

Scott Rogers, the Institute’s managing editor for online communications, made sure the map would workproperly on our website. And Jeff Rubin and the entire Institute communications team were great partnersin this project, including video work by Kori Francis and Katie Durkin and social media contributions by Carolina Krauskopf.


The Washington Institute is a fabulous intellectual community, and I thank all my colleagues for their patience and counsel over the past few years as we built our data set and then this interactive map, which is far better for their feedback. I am especially grateful to the Institute’s leadership, each of whom was supportive of this project and encouraging to the research team that made it possible. It is to this team that I am most grateful. Sarah Boches, Camille Jablonski, Ella Kinder, Ilana Krill, and Juliette Reyes all worked on the data set. Two exceptional research assistants, Lauren von Thaden and Delaney Soliday, carried this project on their shoulders and saw it through to fruition. Lauren and Delaney were effectively the projectmanagers, and it is due to their tremendous energy and dedication that the product came out as well as it has.

Finally, it is a tremendous honor to be named The Washington Institute’s Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow,and to direct the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Thank you tothe Fromer, Wexler, and Reinhard families for your support and friendship.



MATTHEW LEVITT

NOTES

1 U.S. Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Charges and New Arrest in Connection with

Assassination Plot Directed from Iran,” January 27, 2023, https://www.justice.gov/opa/gallery/justice-department-announces-charges-and-new-arrest-connection-assassination-plot.

2 Security Service/MI5, “Director General Ken McCallum Gives Annual Threat Update,” November 16, 2022,

https://www.mi5.gov.uk/news/director-general-ken-mccallum-gives-annual-threat-update.

3 Reuters, “Swedish Security Service Says Iran Uses Criminal Networks in Sweden,” May 30, 2024, https://www.reuters.

com/world/swedish-security-service-says-iran-uses-criminal-networks-sweden-2024-05-30/.

4 Ira Silverman, “An American Terrorist,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2002, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/08/05/an-american-terrorist.

5 U.S. Department of State, “Briefing by Ambassador Philip Wilcox on Release of Report Patterns of Global Terrorism

1996,” April 30, 1997, available at https://1997-2001.state.gov/policy_remarks/970430.wilcox.html.

6 While working on this project, the author has on multiple occasions provided briefings on it to policymakers, law

enforcement, and intelligence officials in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.

7 Samuel Petrequin, “Iranian Diplomat Convicted of Planning Attack on Opposition,” Associated Press, February 4,

2021, https://apnews.com/article/iran-trials-antwerp-france-belgium-6005db14421f60e003cfcf5a32145414.

8 Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Kim Willsher, “France Blames Iran for Foiled Bomb Attack near Paris,” Guardian, October 2,

2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/02/france-blames-iran-for-foiled-bomb-attack-near-paris.

9 U.S. Department of State, “Background Briefing on Meeting with Saudi Officials,” July 10, 2018, https://2017-2021.

state.gov/background-briefing-on-meeting-with-saudi-officials/.

10 Reuters, “Netherlands Expels Two Iranian Embassy Staff: Dutch Intelligence Service,” July 6, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/netherlands-expels-two-iranian-embassy-staff-dutch-intelligence-service-idUSKBN1JW27A/;

and Stephanie Van Den Berg, “Be Careful, Murdered Iranian Activist’s Daughter Tells European Exiles,” Reuters,

December 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/be-careful-murdered-iranian-activist-s-daughter-tells-european-exiles-idUSKBN1E61KB/.

11 Benet Koleka, “Albania Says It Foiled Iranian Plot to Attack Exiled Dissidents,” Reuters, October 23, 2019,

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-albania-iran/albania-says-it-foiled-iranian-plot-to-attack-exiled-dissidents-idINKBN1X22CN/?edition-redirect=in.

12 Matthew Levitt, “Iran’s Deadly Diplomats,” CTC Sentinel 11, no. 7 (August 2018), https://ctc.westpoint.edu/irans-deadly-diplomats/.

13 Levitt, “Iran’s Deadly Diplomats,” https://ctc.westpoint.edu/irans-deadly-diplomats/.

14 Matthew Levitt, “Trends in Iranian External Assassination, Surveillance, and Abduction Plots,” CTC Sentinel 15,

no. 2 (February 2022), https://ctc.westpoint.edu/trends-in-iranian-external-assassination-surveillance-and-abduction-plots/.

15 Matthew Levitt, “The Backstory Behind the Killing of Qods Force Col. Khodaei,” Trends Research & Advisory,

June 20, 2022, https://trendsresearch.org/insight/the-backstory-behind-the-killing-of-qods-force-col-khodaei/; and

Matthew Levitt, “Contending with IRGC Plots,” Lawfare, August 16, 2022, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/contending-irgc-plots.

16 Loveday Morris and Souad Mekhennet, “Hells Angels, a Synagogue Shooting and Iran’s Shady Hand in Germany,”

Washington Post, March 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/06/iran-revolutionary-guard-attacks-germany/; and Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and Yeganeh Torbati, “Rise in Iranian Assassination,

Kidnapping Plots Alarms Western Officials,” Washington Post, December 1, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/

world/2022/12/01/iran-kidnapping-assassination-plots/.

17 Julia Crawford, “Why Switzerland Is Relaunching an Iranian Cold Case for ‘Genocide,’” JusticeInfo.net, October 26,

2021, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/83702-switzerland-relaunching-iranian-cold-case-genocide.html.

18 Levitt, “Iran’s Deadly Diplomats,” https://ctc.westpoint.edu/irans-deadly-diplomats/.

19 Reuters, “Iranian Diplomats Instigated Killing in Istanbul, Turkish Officials Say,” March 27, 2020, https://www.reuters.

com/article/us-turkey-iran-killing-exclusive/exclusive-iranian-diplomats-instigated-killing-of-dissident-in-istanbul-turkish-officials-say-idUSKBN21E3FU/











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