Criminal Gangs: Iran’s Secret Weapon in Europe

Silhouettes of people walking, casting shadows on the ground

Iran’s “covert war” isn’t staying overseas—Western security agencies say it’s increasingly being outsourced to criminal networks and pushed into everyday life in allied countries.

Story Snapshot

Western reporting and research describe a decades-long Iranian campaign of assassinations, kidnappings, espionage, and proxy attacks targeting dissidents, Jews/Israelis, and Western interests.
Recent assessments emphasize Iran’s growing reliance on criminal gangs for deniability, a shift that complicates policing and counterintelligence in Europe and beyond.
Data compiled by researchers tallies hundreds of alleged plots since 1979, with Europe accounting for a large share and a notable portion involving criminal intermediaries.
Authorities in the UK and elsewhere warn that “high-volume, low-cost” plots can strain security services even when many attempts are disrupted.

What “Covert War” Means in Practice

Iran’s external operations are described by multiple sources as a sustained pattern rather than a single incident, stretching back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the creation of institutions tasked with exporting the regime’s ideology abroad. The activity attributed to Tehran includes assassination attempts, kidnappings, espionage, and proxy violence directed at dissidents and perceived enemies. The actors most often identified are the IRGC’s Quds Force and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.

Historical milestones underscore why U.S. and allied officials treat the threat as strategic and long-running, not episodic. Analysts point to major attacks and disrupted plots as markers of capability and intent, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen, and the exposure of a 2011 plot targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in the United States. These cases are frequently cited as evidence that Iran’s overseas operations can be both lethal and audacious.

Why Europe—and Criminal Gangs—Are Central to the New Phase

A key development in recent years is the alleged outsourcing of parts of Iran’s overseas targeting to criminal networks, especially in Europe. Researchers mapping incidents from 1979 through 2024 count 218 alleged plots, with 102 located in Europe and 16 involving criminals, suggesting a practical model: reduce fingerprints, increase reach, and complicate attribution. For host countries, this blurs the line between organized crime and state security threats.

UK-focused reporting frames the challenge as a grinding pressure campaign rather than a single catastrophic strike. The allegation is that “high-volume, low-cost” deniable operations can drain investigative capacity—surveillance hours, informant handling, protective details, and court work—even when plots fail. That dynamic matters for democratic societies: the goal of such activity does not need to be a successful assassination to impose costs; it can be constant disruption and fear.

Cyber Escalation Raises the Cost of Doing Business

Alongside physical plots, research cited in the provided materials points to a rising cyber component. One report describes a post-truce uptick—estimated at 10% to 15%—in cyber activity targeting the United States, Israel, and Gulf states. Even when cyber operations avoid physical harm, they can threaten critical services, private companies, and ordinary citizens. Cyber tools also create a second layer of plausible deniability, complicating deterrence and response.

Politics, Public Trust, and the “Government Can’t Protect Us” Problem

In the U.S. political context of 2026, these developments collide with a broader public frustration that institutions too often seem reactive rather than preventative. Conservatives tend to see porous borders, soft-on-crime governance, and bureaucratic caution as creating openings for adversaries. Liberals often worry about discrimination and overreach in security responses. The hard reality is that when foreign operations allegedly piggyback on local criminality, ordinary policing becomes national defense.

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The most defensible takeaway from the available reporting is not that every claim is fully visible to the public—many specifics depend on intelligence sources—but that the trend lines are consistent across multiple discussions: more alleged plots, more reliance on proxies, and more pressure on allied services such as MI5. For voters already convinced that “elites” protect their own interests first, each disrupted plot can still feel like a system barely holding the line.