Iran is using proxies to carry out low-cost operations against Jewish sites and gathering places around Europe using low-level criminal communities, a security source has told The National.
Responsibility for an arson attack on ambulances run by a Jewish community group in London has been claimed by a new group linked to Iran. Harakat Ashab Al Yamin Al Islamiyya, or Ashab Al Yamin, which translates to the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, is believed to be a front for an Iraqi pro-Iranian Shiite militia.
UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis told MPs on Monday that there was a “distinction” between the plotters of these attacks in the UK and the recruits involved in the incidents. However, he could not comment on the links with recent attacks around Europe.
Ashab Al Yamin has also said it was behind attacks on other Jewish targets, in Belgium and the Netherlands. Social media posts from the group have included a video of the front of the Liege synagogue in Belgium, as it was engulfed in flames.
Dutch think tank the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism cautioned on Monday that the rise of the group's online activity paralleled so-called doppelganger campaigns in other state-sponsored threats. The hybrid model of attack is designed to give direction from Tehran plausible deniability.
"There is no unequivocal proof of Iranian involvement in the series of attacks in Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. The surrounding circumstances, particularly the suspicious online footprint, including dissemination through accounts closely linked to the IRGC ecosystem, strongly point towards Iranian-backed activity," wrote Julian Lanches, research fellow at the ICCT.
The prospect of Iran being behind the attacks, through proxies, has raised fears that Tehran is developing a network of people willing to carry out attacks after being recruited on messaging apps. It comes after Iranians have been charged with spying in the UK.
Det Chief Supt Luke Williams said counter-terrorism investigators are aware of a group apparently claiming responsibility for the attack online, but have not yet verified whether this is true.
Lynette Nusbacher, a former military intelligence officer who worked on the UK’s national security strategy, said Iran has been building a network focused on Israel for years. “The Iranians have for 15 or 20 years been ready to view global Jewish establishments, global Jewish establishments around the world, as a legitimate soft target proxy for Israel,” she told The National.
“The Iranians can motivate people to conduct attacks globally and do so without, perhaps, those people even understanding that they're doing Tehran's bidding."
Roger MacMillan, an expert on Iran’s external operations and espionage, told The National that if Iran is behind the group, then its aim is to send a powerful message about its capability.
“It shows their reach and ability to lash out even in times of extreme pressure from America, and shows that they have still got a capability, no matter how degraded,” he said.
At this stage, it remains unclear who exactly Ashab Al Yamin is, or whether it even exists beyond a couple of Telegram channels, each with fewer than 200 subscribers.
But experts believe the fact that most of its social media activity is directed through channels linked to Iraqi Shiite militia groups aligned to Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), would suggest Iranian fingerprints. That has raised fears that Iraqi Shiite militia are co-ordinating the activity using messaging platforms such as Telegram.
Phillip Smyth, who has been researching Iran’s proxies, has previously said it is his “working assumption” that the Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah is co-ordinating the attacks and the accompanying social media. He explained that the IRGC or Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence may have been cultivating links within the Iraqi Shiite diaspora.
“There's probably a pre-existing series of networks that they have that they can either turn to by electronic means or maybe approach them through whatever agent they have in the country.”
The attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands follow an explosion at the US embassy in Oslo, for which three brothers of Iraqi heritage have been arrested. Last week two Iranians in the UK were charged with spying for Iran after allegedly carrying out “hostile surveillance” of the Israeli embassy and Jewish targets in London.
The current wave of attacks has prompted comparisons with Iran’s use of the Foxtrot criminal network in Sweden to recruit teenage criminals to attack Jewish and Israeli targets. The network's founder, Rawa Majid, has had sanctions imposed by the UK and the US as a result.
Mr MacMillan said his reading of the CCTV footage would indicate that there had not been a high level of planning involved. “They made no attempt to be covert, which would indicate the criminal or thug nature of this.”
