Make way for Quds Force: Tehran enlists organized crime groups to attack enemies abroad: report – The Foreign Desk

The Islamic Republic has in recent years enlisted the help of criminal organizations to carry out operations against its critics in Europe and the United States, according to an investigation on Thursday by The Washington Post.

The newspaper alleged that the regime in Tehran’s foreign campaign is supported by many shadowy groups, including the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, the Russian criminal organization Thieves of Law, the leader of an international Iranian drug trafficking network and several smaller gangs in half a dozen countries.

The Post reported that these allies have been involved in attempts to attack individuals and groups seen as hostile to the theocracy: an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps defector in Maryland, an exiled journalist in New York City, the founder of a Persian-language television station in Turkey, gay and lesbian advocates in Germany, a women’s rights activist in Switzerland, and at least five employees of the London-based dissident news network, Iran International.

The Islamic Republic has also been accused of hiring third parties to orchestrate the assassination of political figures in the US, notably former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton and possibly former President Donald Trump.

The report also claims that Tehran uses these illegal networks to attack Israeli and Jewish institutions in France and Germany. According to the report, mercenaries of the regime are responsible for four anti-Semitic arsons that have taken place in the two countries this year.

US government officials said The Post that the regime has become dependent on repressive outsourcing because of the increasing control and surveillance of its covert activities by Western intelligence services.

The allegations were denied by a spokesman for Tehran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, who described the accusations as “fabrications of the Zionist regime, the Albania-based terrorist sect Mujahedin-e Khalq and certain Western intelligence agencies.”

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