Luring Opponents to Return: “Clever, Multidimensional and Innovative Tricks”
Early Soviet and Nazi leaders sometimes pressured leading dissidents to return from abroad. One of the most successful early Soviet operations was the Trust, designed to disrupt the anti-Bolshevik White émigré community. By creating a false active opposition on Soviet territory, the Trust lured several prominent dissidents to the Soviet Union, where they were killed. One was Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum, who took the name Reilly, worked for British Intelligence, and became an international arms dealer. He was productive and clever but was outwitted by the Soviets and lured to his execution. For their part, Nazi authorities had an image problem in 1936. They feared a boycott of their Olympics and pressured one of their finest women athletes to return from the safety of Britain to compete for Germany. Gretel Bergmann, a Jewish high jump record holder, was told that her parents would be harmed if she did not return and showcase her ability. Fearing for her family’s safety, she returned but was not allowed to compete in the Berlin Olympics.
Similarly, in Iran, the Guards lured a regime critic back to Iran and boasted of abducting him. Major General Salami claimed the Guards captured Rouhollah Zam, a Paris-based Iranian dissident. Zam said he regretted his media activities in exile in recent years. Mr. Zam, the middle-aged son of a reformist cleric, ran the Amadnews website, an antigovernment forum that blamed Iran for provoking nationwide unrest. In its statement, the Guards said it lured Zam into Iran using “clever, multidimensional and innovative tricks,” which even deceived foreign intelligence agencies. In July 2020, a court sentenced Zam to death for corruption on earth.
“Wet Operations”
Early Killings Abroad. Since the regime’s inception, Iran has continued to send teams of assassins abroad to kill its enemies. The Iranian revolution was fragile in its early years, and its leaders feared subversion at home and attacks and intrigue from enemies abroad. The Soviets, years earlier, faced a similar challenge. After a failed assassination attempt on Lenin in August 1918, the Soviet leadership launched a Red Terror. The Soviets sent “Illegals,” multilingual killers, to target enemies. A legendary assassination was the bludgeoning of the well-protected Trotsky in Mexico. His death sent a message that no critic of Stalin was safe. The Soviets frequently murdered defectors in the West. The Nazis, too, killed high-profile enemies beyond their borders.
Iranian leaders, like those of the Soviets and the Nazis, have ordered the tracking down and killing of enemies of the state abroad. Some attacks have been carried out by the Guards, while others by MOIS operatives. Like Stalin, Khomeini sometimes personally signed the death warrants, as many as five hundred, of enemy exiles. Some killings were well planned and professionally executed, whereas others were carried out ineptly.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Iranian operatives worldwide carried out assassinations of opposition figures in the United States, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. In Argentina, Iran-backed groups were accused of the deadly bombings of the Israeli embassy in 1992 and a Jewish community center in 1994, an attack that left 115 people dead.
Most of the high-profile foreign assassinations occurred in the 1990s. Germany was home to nearly 100,000 Iranians who had fled the revolution. Iran used diplomatic facilities to gather intelligence on exile opposition forces in Europe within this community.
Particularly notorious were the 1992 assassinations of three Kurdish dissidents and their translator at Berlin’s Mykonos restaurant. A German court ruling named Iran’s then-president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as ordering the killings. Yet such actions were not limited to Germany, as Khomeini targeted his enemies worldwide. In 1989, a gunman using a sound-suppressing pistol killed an Iranian dissident on Cyprus. A former intelligence colonel was shot in his hotel room in Dubai in June 1989. In March 1990, a survivor of an attack was on his way to an airport in Turkey when a would-be assassin opened fire, injuring him. Other victims were mutilated to send a message. In Istanbul in 1992, a victim was discovered in a shallow grave with her fingernails pulled out and her genitals slashed. Some attacks were brazen, such as the 1993 killing of a leading dissident associated with the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He was shot in the face and killed while sitting in his car in downtown Rome.
The two assassins escaped on a motorcycle. The most notorious assassination to capture world headlines was the August 1991 killing of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the shah’s last prime minister, who was stabbed to death at his home outside Paris. Iranian exiles immediately asserted that the slaying was the work of a hit squad from Tehran. An anticlerical political scientist and proponent of democracy, Bakhtiar had served six years in prison for political activism during the Shah's rule. He had proven liberal credentials and, as a young man, took great risks, fighting in Spain with the loyalists against Franco and later helping the French resistance against the Nazis. As prime minister, he permitted Ayatollah Khomeini to reenter the country, but Khomeini refused to work with him. Bakhtiar escaped to Paris and used his home as a base to organize against Khomeini’s fundamentalist rule. In response, Khomeini likely ordered Bakhtiar murdered. Much like Trotsky in Mexico, Bakhtiar had a well-guarded villa and was shielded around the clock by four policemen.
But Bakhtiar’s stronghold was insufficient to keep out assassins. As with Trotsky, Bakhtiar was killed by a family friend who had accomplices. The murderer was captured and imprisoned in France, but released in 2010 in a prisoner exchange. Most Iranian embassies serve as centers for diplomacy, espionage, and clandestine operations. This is not unique. While the Guards and MOIS operatives mask their identities by assuming the roles of cultural attaches or military officers, this is standard tradecraft used by intelligence services worldwide. What distinguishes the Iranian service personnel assigned to embassies from other intelligence personnel is the frequency with which they use embassies to plan and carry out assassinations, particularly in Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Syria. The Guards continue to target enemies abroad.
In 2018, two alleged Iranian operatives were arrested in the United States on suspicion of conducting preoperational surveillance of Jewish facilities and sympathizers of the controversial and militant MEK. Also in 2018, Albanian authorities arrested two Iranians for planning to kill dissidents, and French authorities claimed to have foiled a large-scale bombing in Paris. An Iranian diplomat in Vienna, arrested in Germany, was believed to be behind the planned attack, along with two people from Belgium who were arrested while in possession of homemade explosives and a detection device. In 2013, Iranian operatives were arrested in Nigeria for planning attacks against U.S. and Israeli tourist sites and organizations. The previous year, two Qods Force operatives were arrested in Kenya for plotting attacks against Western interests. In November 2018, the Danish foreign minister accused Iranian authorities of plotting to kill Iranian dissidents in Europe. The minister said it was “completely clear that the arrow is pointing at the Iranian intelligence service.” In 2019, the European Union confirmed that it suspected Iran of planning and committing assassinations and of hiring European criminal gangs to assassinate Iranian dissidents on the continent. In 2019, the Netherlands accused Iran of two earlier murders—in 2015 in Almere and in 2017 in The Hague.
Summary
Like the Soviets and Nazis before them, the leaders of the new Islamic Republic sought to shape a totalitarian nation-state through coercion and repression. They established the Guards to enforce their new laws and prioritized piety over expertise when selecting candidates and granting promotions. The Guards wield many tools, including imprisoning dissidents and confining them in special wards with medieval conditions. They also have external roles, which they periodically carry out with unchained brutality. In May 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Evin Prison pursuant to Executive Order 13553. That year, Iran arrested protesters, teachers, factory workers, students, intellectuals, and union activists for protesting against the regime. As of late 2020, political prisoners continued to languish in Evin prison.
This concludes the reading from the introduction of Empire of Terror, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, written by Mark Silinsky. If you enjoyed this reading, please consider subscribing. This reading does not represent the official position of any agency or individual within the United States government. On behalf of Kensington Security Consulting, thank you for listening.
