Foiled Paris bomb plot raises fears of Iranian attacks in Europe
Iran has recruited Iraqis, Pakistanis, Lebanese to obscure its own role
On the evening of July 1, police in Bavaria 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.
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.
Iranian leaders, under pressure from domestic protesters, Israeli regime 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 organisations to conduct surveillance of opposition figures, as well as Jewish and Israeli organisations, in the United States and Europe, the officials said.
Preparing for conflict
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.”
Iran’s reach extends to the United States. In August, the Justice Department arrested two Iranian men, one a dual national with US and Iranian citizenship and the other an Iranian who is a legal US resident, for allegedly spying on behalf of 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 programme, 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 multiple officials from the United States and Europe.
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.
The couple, Nasimeh Naami and Amir Saadouni, who were both born in Iran, allegedly planned to bomb a huge Mojahedeen (MEK) rally in Paris, attended by thousands of people, including Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer and a vocal defender of the group, according to French, German and Belgian officials.
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
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.
have claimed he was set up. The Iranian government has said publicly that the plot was fabricated to falsely implicate the regime in terrorism.
‘False’ allegations
The State Department removed the MEK from a list of designated terrorist organisations 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.
French officials have publicly accused Iran’s Intelligence Ministry of planning the attack and have frozen the assets of two suspected intelligence operatives.
French police also raided the headquarters of one of the largest Shiite centres in France, which has links to Iran, according to European officials, and arrested three people.
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 US officials and Iran experts.
In the first 15 years after ruler Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power, 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.
Some experts now fear a return to those kinds of bloody operations. 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.