A Paris court has arrested and charged a couple for their involvement in Iranian-backed plots to assassinate Israelis and Jews in Germany and France in Tehran’s escalating campaign of state-sponsored terrorism in Europe.

French police sources told AFP that Abdelkrim S., 34, and his partner Sabrina B., 33, were detained on May 4, accused of conspiring with a terrorist organization. The pair now sit in pre-trial detention as part of an investigation known as “Marco Polo,” a case that underscores the Iranian government’s renewed use of terror tactics on European soil.

According to a report by France’s General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), consulted by AFP, Iran has ramped up its policy of targeted killings since 2015. The DGSI highlighted how the threat has intensified in the context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Iran is targeting civilians to spread fear among Europe’s Jewish and Israeli communities, while simultaneously intimidating its political opposition abroad.

Police officers work after police shot dead an armed man earlier who set fire to the city’s synagogue in Rouen, France, May 17, 2024.

Tehran is outsourcing its operations to criminal networks, Iranian intelligence agencies having recruited criminals including drug lords to carry out such attacks.

Abdelkrim S., who has a criminal record, was the alleged point-man for an Iranian-sponsored cell. He was previously sentenced to 10 years for a killing in Marseille but was released on probation in July 2023.

French authorities believe he quickly became the linchpin in a terrorist network, tasked with planning violence in both France and Germany. His recruitment by an Iranian-linked drug trafficker in Lyon—who reportedly traveled to Iran in May—underscores Tehran’s use of criminal intermediaries to execute its deadly missions.

Among the cell’s plans were attacks on several individuals, including a former employee of an Israeli security firm and three of his colleagues living in the Paris suburbs.

The plot also extended beyond France, with three Israeli-German citizens residing in Munich and Berlin marked as targets. French investigators revealed that despite being on probation, Abdelkrim S. made multiple trips to Germany, including visits to Berlin with his wife, purportedly for “scouting” purposes. He denied the charges, claiming he was merely running errands.

The plot did not end with personal attacks. French authorities have also linked the cell to a scheme to burn down four Israeli-owned businesses in southern France between late December 2023 and early January 2024. Although Abdelkrim S. has rejected the accusations, investigators are confident in his involvement. His defense, that he was only a middleman on the Telegram messaging app for an insurance scam, seems weak in the face of mounting evidence.

The case is far from isolated. As Der Spiegel reported on Thursday, security agencies across Europe have thwarted multiple Iranian-backed terrorist plots this year. Operations have been foiled in multiple European nations including those targeting Jewish and Israeli businesses and communities in Germany and France, in addition to countries such as Sweden and Belgium.

Police secures evidence after two molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue overnight in Berlin, Germany, October 18, 2023.

In August, Iran International reported on operations by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia group backed by Iran’s Quds Force, targeting Jewish centers in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Earlier this year, Israeli and Swedish intelligence agencies warned of Tehran’s use of criminal networks as terrorist proxies in Europe, highlighting a broader pattern of state-sanctioned violence.

In May, Iran International reported that Israeli and Swedish intelligence agencies had warned about the Islamic Republic’s use of criminal networks as terrorist proxies in Europe to carry out a series of attacks on Israeli embassies in Europe.

Last year, the US named Iran as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism.

A series of Iranian-backed terror plots targeting Jews and Israeli-linked businesses in Europe were foiled by security services earlier this year, according to an investigation by the German daily Der Spiegel.

The thwarted attacks, planned for 2024, involved a criminal network recruited by Tehran to conduct surveillance on Jewish and Israeli targets in Germany. At the same time, a series of arson attacks targeted Israeli-owned businesses in southern France, starting at the end of 2023 and continuing into 2024.

Iran International reported In May this year that Israeli and Swedish Intelligence agencies warned about Iran using criminal networks as terrorist proxies in Europe to carry out a string of attacks on Israeli embassies in Europe since October 7.

Planned attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in Germany

According to the report, one of the key suspects who is referred to as Abdolkarim S., is a 34-year-old French national with a history of violent crime. Abdolkarim, known for his involvement in the drug trade in Marseille, was allegedly recruited by Tehran to scout Jewish and Israeli-related targets in Europe.

In February 2024, Abdolkarim and his wife traveled to Berlin, where, according to German investigators, he used his wife’s phone to locate the office of a Jewish lawyer who represents Israeli clients. Investigators found the address of the lawyer’s office on a navigation app used during the trip. This marked the first appearance of the Iranian-sponsored cell in Germany.

Two months later, in April 2024, Abdolkarim made two separate trips to Munich, this time without his wife. According to Der Spiegel, German security services closely monitored him as he scouted a Jewish family’s business in the eastern part of Munich. He filmed the building, its surroundings, and doorbell signs. Investigators suspect the family, which has close ties to Israel, was the intended target of a planned attack. In one audio message sent to an unknown recipient, Abdolkarim reportedly said, “I have seen the company, there were people inside, but the person wasn’t there,” suggesting he had been scouting for a specific individual.

These surveillance activities did not go unnoticed. German intelligence services tracked Abdolkarim’s movements, leading to his arrest in late April 2024. Abdolkarim was subsequently detained in France, and French authorities have charged him with terrorism-related offenses. His surveillance efforts in Germany are believed to have been part of a broader plan by Tehran to orchestrate attacks against Jewish and Israeli figures in Europe.

Arson attacks on Israeli-owned businesses in France

While the attacks in Germany were thwarted, Israeli-owned businesses in southern France were targeted in a series of arson attacks. Between December 2023 and January 2024, four businesses were set on fire, including a warehouse near Montpellier. The businesses ranged from a water treatment company to a software engineering firm, which on the surface appeared to have little in common. However, investigators, according to Der Spiegel, discovered that all the companies were owned by Israelis, linking the attacks to the same criminal network associated with Abdolkarim.

French intelligence agency DGSI believes the arson attacks were part of a larger Iranian plot to strike Israeli-linked interests in Europe. Investigators reportedly found the addresses of the targeted businesses on Abdolkarim’s phone, suggesting his role in passing the information to those who carried out the attacks. However, the physical perpetrators of the arson attacks have not yet been identified.

Tehran’s use of criminal networks

Western intelligence agencies have been tracking an emerging trend where the Iranian regime uses criminal networks in Europe to carry out state-sponsored terrorism. Tehran has shifted its strategy in recent years, moving away from using its own agents and instead relying on local criminals to execute terror attacks, as reported by Der Spiegel. This approach, security officials suggest, allows Iran to maintain “deniability” by distancing itself from direct involvement.

The thwarted attacks in Germany and the arson in France are part of this broader pattern. Abdolkarim was released from prison in 2023 after serving time for his role in a gang murder. Shortly after his release, he was allegedly recruited by Tehran’s network.

Despite the arrests, investigators remain concerned that media reports revealing the Iranian-backed plot in April may have compromised their efforts to fully dismantle the terror cell.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is waging an assassination campaign in Europe to silence its critics and pressure European governments to adopt conciliatory measures. The uptick should serve as a wakeup call. Amid popular unrest in Iran and the possibility of a “snapback” of UN sanctions, violence has become an even more attractive tool for a desperate regime. European governments are afraid to get tough on the Islamic Republic, lest they jeopardize the 2015 nuclear deal, yet passivity only encourages more violence.

Europe has long been an unsafe place for Iranian dissidents and opposition figures. The clerical regime has executed more than 60 assassination operations since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar was murdered in Paris in 1991. Last year, opposition journalist Ruhollah Zam was lured from his hideaway in Paris to Iraq and arrested by regime intelligence agents. Zam currently faces execution in Iran. And just last month, Sadegh Zarza, a 64-year-old former member of the leadership of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, barely survived an assassination attempt in the Netherlands. Zarza’s brother Taher told the Dutch paper Leeuwarden Courant that Sadegh suffered numerous stab wounds to his chest, stomach, neck, and head.

Also in June, Mohammad Davoudzadeh Loloei, a 40-year-old Norwegian Iranian who chaired the Norwegian-Iranian Friendship Association, received a seven-year prison sentence in Denmark for his involvement in a plot to murder an Iranian-Arab dissident in that country. Likewise, the Dutch government last year accused Iran’s regime of assassinating two Iranian dissidents in the Netherlands.

The Dutch murders, coupled with Tehran’s plot to bomb a 2018 Iranian exile conference in Paris, did rouse a European response, but it consisted of no more than tame penalties on Khamenei’s regime: Brussels froze the assets of an Iranian intelligence unit and two of its employees.

This timidity is a longstanding European habit. Its leaders are more concerned about protecting the nearly dead 2015 nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, than punishing the regime for terror attacks on European soil. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government even failed to punish the regime for its recruitment of a Pakistani man for espionage and possible assassination attempts on behalf of Iran’s Qods Force − a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The Qods Force agent was reportedly scouting Jewish targets in Germany and France for future attacks.

Making matters worse, Merkel’s government has provided refuge to some of the Islamic Republic’s most violent human rights abusers. Iranian cleric and former judge Gholamreza Mansouri, fearing arrest after being charged with corruption in Tehran, reportedly sought shelter in an infamous Hanover clinic, which at one time hosted another top human rights abuser, the now deceased former judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi. Mansouri, known for imprisoning and torturing journalists, later surfaced in Bucharest, Romania, where he was found dead, most likely pushed out of his hotel window by regime agents.

Other current and former regime officials roam Europe freely, often maintaining homes in major cities. Ata’ollah Mohajerani, a former minister of culture and Islamic guidance who once defended the religious death sentence on Salman Rushdie, resides in London and is a frequent commentator for BBC Persian. Italy is reported to be a major source of multi-entry visas for regime officials.

How can Europe force the Islamic Republic to rethink its tactics? First, in response to regime assassinations and terrorism, the European Union (EU) and individual member states should suspend diplomatic relations with the regime and withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran. Furthermore, Iranian ambassadors should be expelled from European capitals. In addition, the EU and its member states should impose sanctions against the regime for its assassination campaign and gross human rights abuses. Lebanese Hezbollah, the regime’s terror proxy, should also be banned by all European countries.

One might object that cutting lines of communication to Tehran will only make it harder to resolve tensions. Yet nearly forty years of European diplomacy with various regime presidents has not curtailed Iranian state-sponsored terrorism. After all, Berlin prosecutors accused the late Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khamenei of ordering the murders of Iranian Kurdish dissidents in the West Berlin restaurant Mykonos in 1992. After Mykonos many European countries broke off relations with Tehran. The ultimate perpetrators of the assassination, including former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, remain at large. If the regime cannot respect the most basic norms of international politics, such as refraining from violence against civilians on foreign soil, then diplomacy serves little purpose but to make additional concessions.

Without European pressure, the Islamic Republic will continue its terror and assassination campaign. A lack of European punishment may even induce the regime to conduct mass casualty attacks on European soil; Hezbollah has a history of terrorist bombings in several European countries, including France and most recently Bulgaria. Ignoring the Islamic Republic’s terrorism is likely to make the problem worse than ever before.

The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily the views of Radio Farda

On the evening of July 1, police in Germany surrounded the rented van of an Iranian diplomat after he pulled over at a gas station on the autobahn. Fearing he might be transporting explosives, the authorities summoned the bomb squad. The diplomat, based at Iran’s embassy in Vienna, had been under surveillance for some time and was suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb a rally of Iranian dissidents in Paris. Despite his diplomatic status, he was arrested and extradited to Belgium, where two others, suspected of planning to carry out the attack in France, were detained.

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The foiled plot has sparked growing anxiety in France, Germany and several other countries, including the United States and Israel, that Iran is planning audacious terrorist attacks and has stepped up its intelligence operations around the world.

France’s government said Oct. 2 it seized assets from Iran’s intelligence services and two Iranian nationals over a June plot to attack a rally in Paris. (Video: Reuters)

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Iranian leaders — under pressure from domestic protesters, Israeli intelligence operatives and the Trump administration, which is reimposing economic sanctions lifted under President Barack Obama — are making contingency plans to strike at the country’s adversaries in the event of open conflict, according to American, European, Middle Eastern and Israeli officials and analysts who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Iran has assigned different units and organizations to conduct surveillance of opposition figures, as well as Jewish and Israeli organizations, in the United States and Europe, the officials said. The Iranians are preparing what one Israeli official called “target files” of specific people or groups that Iran could attack.

With insults like “Nazi-disposition” and “brutal,” President Trump and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani traded criticisms at the 2018 U.N. General Assembly. (Video: Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)

One Middle Eastern intelligence official, speaking on the condition that his name and nationality be withheld, cited a “definite uptick” in the level of activity by Iranian operatives in recent months, adding that the Iranians are “preparing themselves for the possibility of conflict.”

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Iran’s reach extends to the United States. In August, the Justice Department arrested two Iranian men, one a dual national with U.S. and Iranian citizenship and the other an Iranian who is a legal U.S. resident, on suspicion of spying on behalf of Iran. The pair are accused of conducting surveillance on a Jewish organization in Chicago and rallies in New York and Washington that were organized by the Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, a dissident group that seeks regime change in Iran.

But the case of the Iranian diplomat is the most alarming, officials and analysts said, and has strained Iran’s diplomatic relations with Germany and France. Both countries are trying to hold together a landmark 2015 agreement meant to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which the Trump administration has abandoned.

The diplomat, Assadollah ­Assadi, has been a high-ranking official in Iran’s embassy in Vienna since 2014 but is also suspected of being the station chief of the Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, according to officials from the United States and ­Europe.

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In late June, European intelligence services tracked Assadi as he met with a married couple of Iranian descent living in Belgium and — according to the couple, who spoke to police after their arrest — gave them about a pound of explosive material and a detonator, the officials said.

French, German and Belgian officials say the couple, Nasimeh Naami and Amir Saadouni, who were both born in Iran, planned to bomb a huge MEK rally in Paris, attended by thousands of people, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer and a vocal defender of the group.

European officials said the couple, who are cooperating with authorities, identified Assadi as their longtime handler. Assadi professes not to know them, according to German officials, who said Iranian authorities have claimed he was set up. The Iranian government has said publicly that the plot was fabricated to falsely implicate the regime in terrorism.

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A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied that Iran had planned to attack the rally in Paris, calling the allegations “categorically false.” And he accused the MEK and Israel of staging the plot “to sabotage Iran-E.U. relations.”

“The MEK had long been listed as a terrorist group by the E.U. and the U.S.; it also has a long history of propaganda and false-flag operations,” said the spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi.

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The U.S. State Department removed the MEK from a list of designated terrorist organizations in 2012. The group has publicly denied any involvement in the attempted attack in Paris.

Authorities said that Belgium would take the lead in the case for now, since the couple were arrested and have citizenship there.

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French officials have publicly accused Iran’s Intelligence Ministry of planning the attack and have frozen the assets of two suspected intelligence operatives. “This extremely serious act envisaged on our territory could not go without a response,” France’s interior, foreign and economy ministers said in a joint statement. “In taking this decision, France underlines its determination to fight against terrorism in all its forms, particularly on its own territory.”

French police also raided the headquarters of one of the largest Shiite Muslim centers in France, which has links to Iran, according to European officials, and arrested three people.

Belgian officials contend that Assadi, who was surrounded at the gas station while traveling with his wife and two sons, is not protected by diplomatic immunity from prosecution because he was arrested outside Austria.

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The case has been closely watched by the Trump administration. Assadi’s arrest “tells you, I think, everything you need to know about how the government of Iran views its responsibilities in connection with diplomatic relations,” White House national security adviser John Bolton told reporters this month. Bolton, a prominent Iran hawk, has been leading Trump administration efforts to place new sanctions on Iran, which he called “the central banker of international terrorism.”

The MOIS has a long history of conducting surveillance operations in Europe, but an attack at a major public gathering in Paris, attended by Trump’s lawyer, would invite massive retaliation from the French and the Americans, prompting some experts to wonder why Iran would take such a risk.

Iran has in the past targeted Iranian dissidents abroad, and Tehran has previously been linked to numerous plots involving Israeli, Jewish and Arab interests in the West. The level of Iranian activity ebbs and flows, sometimes without a discernible reason, according to former U.S. officials and Iran experts.

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In the first 15 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power as supreme ruler in 1979, Iranian agents assassinated at least 60 people in four European countries. The most notorious single attack was the 1992 assassination of a Kurdish Iranian dissident leader and three of his colleagues, all shot inside a Berlin restaurant.

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Some experts now fear a return to those kinds of bloody operations.

In Germany last year, a Pakistani man was sentenced to four years in prison for scouting out potential targets with links to Israel and Jewish organizations on behalf of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to court documents, he had been in touch with his Iranian handlers since at least 2011. But the “contact intensified” in the middle of 2015, around the same time that authorities believe the couple planning to attack the MEK rally were first contacted by Assadi.

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Officials said that Iran has recruited people from Pakistan, as well as from Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, North Africa and Afghanistan, in order to obscure the country’s role in overseas spying.

A high-level German official said Iran’s aggression inside Europe calls for a tougher response.

“There are clear indications for calling this a case of state terrorism,” the official said of the thwarted Paris attack. But leaders in Germany and France, the official said, “would rather play the danger and level of interference down,” in order to hold together the nuclear deal.

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Norman Roule, who served 34 years in the CIA and retired last year as the national intelligence manager for Iran, said the lack of a tougher European response, especially in the wake of Iran’s support of terrorism on the continent, has likely sent a message to Tehran: “You can get away with pretty much anything.”

Roule said that Iran has been testing the limits of European and American resolve for decades. The regime has launched cyberattacks, supported terrorist groups, and, in 2013, plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States at a fashionable restaurant in Washington — an attack Roule said would probably have inflicted civilian casualties. All those events saw little tangible response, he said.

“My fear is that Iran may well believe they have yet to reach our red line, and this is a recipe for further attacks,” Roule said.

While U.S. officials have accused Iran’s top leaders of being behind the biggest plots, Iranian intelligence factions have sometimes acted in competition with one another, with little apparent coordination with the country’s ruling clerics, former U.S. officials said. Some think that pattern may be repeating now.

“It is not always the case that a senior [Iranian] official says, ‘Go and do this,’ ” said Matthew Levitt, a former counterterrorism official with the Treasury Department and the FBI. “Sometimes initiative — even stupid initiative, even initiative that fails — is smiled upon within this system.”

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In light of the operations in Europe and the United States, it’s not clear that the Iranian leadership is in control of its own operatives, said intelligence officials in multiple countries.

One German official said that based on his government’s discussions with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s leaders understand that an attack in the heart of Europe could do irreparable damage to their country’s relationship with the remaining signatories to the nuclear deal.

But there is also a parallel power structure in Iran, and as domestic unrest grows and more Iranians die fighting in Iraq and Syria, Iranian hard-liners elsewhere in the government could push for a show of force against the West, the German official said.

The regime has also been humiliated by recent Israeli spying operations that laid bare huge troves of documents about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly crowed about his spies’ prowess and has pressed for a tougher international response to Iran.

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In a speech last month at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu cited the arrest of the two operatives in the U.S. and the foiled Paris attack as evidence of Iran’s continued support of terrorism in the West, despite the election of more moderate leaders and the nuclear deal.

“If you think that Iran’s aggression has been confined to the Middle East, think again,” Netanyahu said.

An Israeli official said that there is a directive from the top levels of the Iranian government to develop targets quickly, and that the Intelligence Ministry has pushed its operatives to work too fast, leading to mistakes and arrests.

The two Iranian men arrested on suspicion of spying inside the United States were under surveillance by the FBI for an extended period of time, with their travel inside and outside the country tracked, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

The two men also appeared to be pressed for time. The alleged agent with dual Iranian and American citizenship urged his associate, who lived in California, to hand over photographs and other material he’d been gathering for target packages. But the California man “expressed some frustration,” according to the complaint, because he wanted more time to get the materials in order.

“I don’t like to do it this way . . . I like to have a complete package, meaning that there is no gap in information,” he said.