How Iran carries out murder and kidnapping plots abroad How Iran carries out murder and kidnapping plots abroad

For the Canadian-Iranian musician Ramin Seyed Emami, the world is turned upside down in the summer of 2021 when the Canadian secret service is on the doorstep. One of the officials informs Emami that Iran has drawn up a list of people living abroad who pose a threat to the regime.

Emami’s name is not on the list, but is clearly implied. He is strongly advised to take security precautions and not travel to countries neighboring Iran. He is also given a bag designed to block electromagnetic waves from his mobile phone.

‘You can tell them [die Kanadier] take it seriously,” says the artist. “They realize that people are in danger in their own country, and suddenly it becomes important.” Emami runs a podcast in Persian on topics that are taboo in Iran – sex, mental health and loss of religiosity His father died in an Iranian prison and his mother was not allowed to leave the country.

Increasing efforts on the part of Iran

In fact, Iran has continued its plans for international assassinations and kidnappings, as the Washington Post wrote. The targets of these plots are dissidents, journalists, politicians and influential businessmen. According to US media, a plan to attack and foil former Trump security adviser John Bolton was discovered in October.

French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy was also the target of an attack. According to the French secret service, the Quds, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, contacted a jewel thief and paid him about 150,000 francs to recruit other criminals for Lévy’s murder. Lévy repeatedly criticizes the Iranian regime.

Last year, four suspected Iranian agents were charged in New York with conspiracy to kidnap journalist Masih Alinejad to Venezuela. They allegedly hired private investigators to guard their home and plan a speedboat kidnapping.

Revenge for Soleimani’s murder

Such plots have increased since Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds, was killed by a drone strike in January 2020. Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, told the Washington Post that 36 of Iran’s 124 international “interventions” have taken place since Soleimani’s death. For him, this is an “extraordinary increase”.

Iran has a long history of assassinations and kidnappings. But, “Now they’re no longer just planning murders and kidnappings in case someone falls out of favor, now they actually kill and kidnap,” says Levitt.

That’s how murder works

Iranian “remote operations” usually go by script. First, agents track and follow their targets. They write down their daily routine, their hobbies, their way to work and plans for holidays abroad.

Tehran then uses this information to hire another locally recruited agent to plan an assassination attempt or kidnapping. So the man behind Bolton’s botched assassination attempt reached out to his co-conspirator (who was actually an FBI agent) via social media. The same Iranian middleman also allegedly used the same pattern to kill a Georgian businessman who wanted to improve Georgian-Israeli relations.