The Role of Terrorism in Iranian Foreign Policy
Two motivating factors drive Iran’s foreign policy. In the short term, Iran’s foreign policy is oriented toward regime survival. The regime, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, faces what it perceives as many threats emanating from the region and the global arena.
Since 1979, Iran’s relationship with Western Europe has been tense. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the body responsible for conducting many vital state activities, including its foreign policy, faces vociferous calls to be banned in several European nations, including the United Kingdom.[1] It has been accused of engaging in subversive activities, including conspiring to commit acts of terrorism on European soil. Hence, in the short term, Iran’s foreign policy objective is rooted in pragmatism and recurrently employs asymmetric methods operating below the legal threshold.
In the long term, however, Iran’s foreign policy goal is to ‘perpetuate the Islamic revolution’ and to ‘prepare the ground for the creation of a single world Ommat’[2] or religious community. The export of the revolution, in other words, mass proselytisation and propagandisation of the Iranian regime’s brand of Shia Islam, is the stated driving force in Iran’s constitution. Here, the foreign policy objective is founded on a strict ideological premise and reflects less rational pragmatism and more religious fervour.
The role of pragmatism and the proactive dissemination of Iran’s brand of Shia Islam serve the same purpose: to ensure that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s clerical regime survives, and to endow the regime with the legitimacy to wield power and govern Iran. In this article, I will argue that the use of terrorism by the Iranian regime is to serve these two principal objectives.
Background of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Foreign Policy
The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded in 1979 through a popular revolution. The founder of the Islamic Republic was a Shia cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His vision for the country centred on an orthodox adherence to Shia Islam. At the heart of this orthodoxy were two fundamental concepts: the first, that a hidden Imam, known as the 12th Imam, would one day descend upon earth; and the second, that the leader of Iran is simply a guardian until the arrival of the 12th Imam.[3]
The Supreme Leader is the guardian of the nation and is often referred to as the faqih. The faqih is the preeminent expert in Islamic law and practices. Hence, the Islamic Republic’s compass as a nation is directed toward a destiny conceptualised by a puritanical version of Shia doctrine. Its constitution endows the Supreme Leader with indomitable authority over the state, including the power to shape and dictate its foreign policy. Indeed, the constitution’s ideological quality indelibly informs Iran’s foreign policy.
The direction of Iran’s foreign policy is couched in absolutist, yet equally vague, terms. As Article 152 of the constitution states: ‘the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran shall be based on the defence of the rights of all Muslims.’[4] Therefore, the symbolic guardianship of the nation, as enshrined in the constitution, transcends national borders—reflecting the scope and ambition of the Islamic Republic.
While Iran seeks to champion a doctrinal cause inherent in its religious provenance, it also seeks to act as the doyen and the defender of Muslims the world over. While this might suggest that normative considerations informed the Islamic Republic’s nascent foreign policy, in fact, it reflects a power-maximising logic instead, one that endures to this day.
By claiming to represent all Muslims, the Islamic Republic seeks to establish a form of religious legitimacy that enhances its authority at home and bolsters its clout abroad. This grants the regime the kind of global reach and influence it could never attain had it claimed to speak solely for Iranians, or indeed uniquely for Shia Muslims. This aligns with realist notions of states seeking power interests and utilising expansionism to enhance regime security and gain status.[5]
Thus, the regime’s reasoning goes, the role of religion in Iran’s foreign policy negates the need to set limitations on its national interests abroad, pretexted by its claim to be a voice for all Muslims. This role is both self-assigned and claimed to be divinely attributed to the Supreme Leader. As the Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has stated, ‘Iran seeks to enhance its regional and global stature to promote its ideals’.[6]
The Ayatollah Khomeini established two principles to guide Iran’s foreign policy. The first principle was ‘Neither East nor West but the Islamic Republic’, and the second was ‘Export the Revolution’. The historical and logical landscape in which these principles were conceived was deeply precarious. Iran had been subjected to foreign coups in its past, such as the CIA-executed overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddeq in Operation Ajax in 1953.
In 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and initiated a war that would plague both sides for 8 years and cause a million deaths. Hence, placing regime survival at the heart of Iranian foreign policy is not only justifiable but also necessary from the vantage point of the head of a government that has had powerful enemies from its outset. As Gomari-Luksch states, ‘in a hostile anarchical international setting, a state must relentlessly pursue its own survival and can undertake political manoeuvres in doing so.’[7]
The hemispheric poles referenced in the first principle signify a rejection of Cold War superpowers, the United States and the USSR. Independence from great power competition meant that Iran could pursue its foreign policy objectives seemingly without compromise. Neither power in the bipolar world order shared in the Ayatollah’s vision of what Carl Anthony Wege termed Iran’s pursuit of an ‘Islamist imperium.’[8]
Rejecting the superpowers signalled Iran’s intent to chart an entirely different foreign policy course—one shaped by theocratic, rather than capitalist or communist, considerations. Under the guise of religious and moral authority, Iran could advance its cause without being beholden to an arbitrary hegemonic force in world politics. It also reflects Iran’s practical, tangible foreign policy objective—the objective through which religious rhetoric would serve as a vessel—namely, Iran’s aspirations to be a religious and political hegemon, both regionally and globally.
Here, Iran’s second foreign policy principle, that of ‘Exporting the Revolution’, is most saliently illustrative of the regime’s hegemonic ambitions. The export of the revolution was a model designed to inspire analogous Islamic revolutions throughout the region. In other words, Iran sought to inspire a hostile takeover of the Muslim world by proxy. And its foreign policy would provide the strategic blueprint for this aspiration.
As Khomeini advocated for in his 1987 ‘manifesto of the Islamic Revolution’, Muslims around the globe were urged to join in the struggle against ‘pagan’ nations such as the superpowers and Israel, as well as their subordinates in the Muslim world, including arch-rivals Saudi Arabia. Thus, the Islamic Republic established a Manichean narrative reflecting what the regime held to be an anarchic international environment, in which only a zero-sum outcome is possible.
Its prognosis for this worldview was ultimately isolation and militarised rivalries. As Khomeini once stated: ‘We must become isolated to become independent.’[9] By calling on the Muslim world to reject the great powers and their ‘servant’ Islamic allies, the regime sought to destabilise its adversaries, so that it might benefit from the internal disorder it hoped to sow within enemy borders.
In other words, by weakening its adversaries, Iran believes it can better maintain its vital interests. ‘Terrorism is an important instrument of Iranian policy,’ writes a 1987 CIA report, ‘[which is] used to promote national interests and export the regime’s revolutionary ideals.’[10] This fundamentally realist approach to foreign policy underpins Iran’s use of terrorism and subversion to this day.
Intelligence and Diplomacy in Iranian Terrorism Plots in Europe
In the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini established two intelligence organisations to oversee Iran’s foreign policy objectives. These organisations are the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – Intelligence Organisation (IRGC-IO) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Both organisations have been involved in the planning and execution of terrorist activities in Europe, and both have also had a considerable role to play in the construction of networks across several European cities.
The IRGC – IO’s foreign policy portfolio includes presiding over Iran’s external intelligence operations, such as espionage, covert operations, and providing material and logistical support for terrorist activities. The MOIS is predominantly a civilian intelligence organisation, and whilst its primary remit is domestic intelligence, it has been involved in spying on Iranians abroad, and provides support to diplomats operating as covert agents advancing the regime’s foreign policy objectives. The heads of these organisations are appointed by and report directly to the Supreme Leader in Tehran.
Since 2018 there have been eleven confirmed terrorist plots linked to Iran in Europe[11]. Iranian intelligence organisations have been directly involved in each of these operations. While the chain of command in these plots has led back to Iranian officials in Tehran, the character of the operations differs. Indeed, Iran’s intelligence network in Europe spans various domains and sectors, and depending on the target country, its operatives and their handlers employ different methods to achieve their aims.
The European theatre of operations can be broken down into three categories, each operationally interconnected and working toward the same ends: ensuring regime survival and spreading the Islamic revolution. These categories are intelligence gathering, political and social subversion, and violent terrorist attacks. Iran’s diplomatic apparatus has also provided the regime’s European operatives with a degree of cover, facilitating assets’ manoeuvrability and mobility on the continent.
The targets have been consistently either Israeli or Jewish interests, and Iranian dissidents. That they are targeted on European soil also reflects the regime’s relationship with the targeted countries. For example, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Republic conducted terrorist attacks against targets in France, in retaliation for the sale of arms to Iraq and for extending sanctuary to Iranian dissidents.
There is a retaliatory component to the regime’s use of terrorism in Europe. These plots do not occur in a vacuum. Their rationale stems from geopolitical developments that compromise the Iranian regime, placing Iran at a disadvantage in a conflict or in the geopolitical power struggle the regime is engaged in.
According to Ardavan and Arvin Khoshnood, Iran experts based out of Lund University in Malmo, Sweden, the Islamic Republic instrumentalises intelligence to execute terrorist attacks against Iranian dissidents because the regime considers many Iranians in exile to be a threat to the regime’s security and existence.’[12] The method of violence recurrent in plots targeting dissidents in Western Europe has been assassination attempts.
As dissidents are prone to undermining the regime’s narrative both domestically and globally, the regime deems it of paramount importance for Iranian intelligence operatives to nullify them. Particularly those blaspheming against the regime’s foreign policy principle of ‘Exporting the Revolution.’ Since ‘anarchy is a permissive condition,’ as stated by international relations scholar Stephen Walt, the regime is resolved to use or threaten violence, in an international system within which the regime believes it alone can ensure its own security. Extraterritorial killings, therefore, are simply another avenue for the regime to pursue power, influence, and domination.
Iran expert Ruhollah Ramazani captures this notion rather well when he wrote: ‘the realists [in the Islamic Republic’s regime] who also hope for an Islamic world order, are willing to come to terms with the realities of the existing international system.’[13] In rejecting the domination of other powers over it, Iran signals its intention to exert its own domination.
The means by which that is achieved will depend less on geopolitical circumstances and more on what the regime considers expedient, reasoning that it must exercise every capability to ensure its enemies do not undermine it. As previously alluded to, the regime views the international system in zero-sum terms, after all. Hence, the great lengths to which the regime is willing to go to eliminate its security threats, including utilising its diplomatic and intelligence organs for unlawful purposes, such as conducting terrorist activities.
In the case studies below, I examine the role of Iranian intelligence organisations and diplomatic officials in two separate terrorist plots. Both plots involve instructions linked directly to the regime’s upper echelons in Tehran. In the first, the assassination plot targeting Iranian journalists based in Britain, the chain of command leads to senior IRGC officials—one of whom is an appointee of the Supreme Leader.
In the second, the mastermind of the plot was a diplomat and head of an intelligence unit within the Ministry of Intelligence, and the targets were also dissidents. Both cases involve the contracting of criminal operatives stationed within Europe. They reveal that Iran has cultivated an extensive intelligence apparatus principally designed to silence critics of the regime through the threat of violence. While the plots failed, the psychological impact of the attempts signals the willingness of the regime to go to extreme measures to terminate threats posed to it.
Case Study 1: Assassination Plot on Iranian Dissidents, November 2022, London
The foiled attempt from November 2022 in London provides an elucidating illustration of how the regime exercises its overseas network to terminate Iranian dissidents. The targets were two dissident journalists. Their names are Fardad Farazhad and Sima Sabet, and they were targeted for assassination by the IRGC’s Unit 840—an international intelligence unit headed by Sardar Bagheri, an appointee of the Supreme Leader. The journalists are employed by the broadcasting company Iran International, which habitually criticises the Islamic Republic.
Iran International’s head office was in West London at the time. Intelligence and press reports from the United Kingdom disclose that Unit 840 had been instructed by an IRGC commander, Mohammed Reza Ansari, to conduct an intelligence gathering mission on the targets. The mission included reconnaissance on the site where the targets worked. Once the intelligence mission was completed, the head of Unit 840 identified various ways in which the assassinations could be conducted. That the compound where the targets worked was heavily securitised complicated the Unit’s initial plans to plant a car bomb close to the Iran International studio.
Following the abortive plan to plant a car bomb, Iranian assets in London consulted IRGC officials in Tehran regarding how to proceed with the plot. According to reports, Muhammed Abd Al-Razek Kanafani, a prominent IRGC official, then advised the hitman contracted to execute the killing to conduct another reconnaissance mission of the targets’ homes, and to assassinate them with a knife attack. Indeed, Kanafani issued the order to the assassin via a phone call. The plot was foiled by Scotland Yard following a tip-off by MI5.[14]
Case Study 2: Bomb Plot on Dissidents Summit, June 2018, Paris
The plot to inflict mass casualties by bombing a National Council of Resistance of Iran summit in Paris was presided over by an Iranian diplomat stationed in the Iranian embassy in Austria. The diplomat was Assadollah Assadi. In addition to his role at the Iranian embassy in Austria, Assadi was head of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence’s clandestine activities in Europe. He was working in tandem with the Directorate of Internal Security, known as Directorate 312.
This directorate was already on the European Union’s list of terrorist organisations at the time of the bomb plot. To illustrate the continent-wide breadth of Iran’s intelligence network in Europe, reports revealed that Assadi had travelled to 11 European countries, where he is alleged to have met with Iranian intelligence assets at 280 locations.
On his travels, Assadi carried documents that indicated the assets’ locations and details of the bomb plot. Throughout his travels, Assadi leveraged his diplomatic status to secure immunity from checks and questioning. It was not until the Belgian authorities had evidence that he was orchestrating a plot to detonate an explosive device in Paris that Assadi and his operatives were put under close surveillance.
Assadi contracted at least three operatives to carry out the attack and met with them in Belgium and Luxembourg. In Luxembourg, he provided the operatives with 500 grams of a highly volatile explosive, triacetone triperoxide, a detonator, and a USB stick with instructions on how to ignite the explosive once the operatives had infiltrated the summit.
The operatives were to pose as members of a regime opposition group, a tactic regularly employed by Iranian intelligence operatives abroad, to infiltrate dissident circles. The operatives were also given 20,000 Euros in cash to execute the attack. Belgian authorities confirmed that the implements were contained in a diplomatic bag—indicating that Assadi was exploiting his diplomatic status to facilitate a terrorist attack he had planned. The plot was foiled when the operatives were apprehended following the Luxembourg drop-off, and Assadi was eventually arrested in Germany. He was unable to leverage his diplomatic status there because his accreditation was invalid in Germany. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2021.[15]
Conclusion
As Carl Anthony Wege states, ‘state-sponsored terrorism is a major asset’[16] of Iran’s operational network in many Western European countries. This operational network spans multiple asymmetric and diplomatic domains and has been cultivated by the regime since the inception of the Islamic Republic. Intelligence organisations play a critical role in harnessing Iran’s network of subversion on European soil. As I have demonstrated in this article, two intelligence organisations with direct links to the Supreme Leader are responsible for orchestrating, facilitating, and attempting to execute terrorist activities abroad. These are the IRGC-IO and the MOIS.
The motivation behind Iran’s decision to pursue terrorism as a method is to ensure regime survival. As Khoshnood wrote, ‘the use of terrorism is a significant option for the regime to use against what [it] deems a security threat.’ Furthermore, the regime seeks to garner legitimacy in the Muslim world. Both these pursuits are informed by realist considerations, reflected in Iran’s foreign policy approach. This foreign policy approach is ultimately rooted in rational pragmatism, seeking to bolster the regime’s security, increase its regional and global influence, and maximise its power.
This article was first published in the Times of Israel on July 4, 2024.
—
Notes
[1] Aarabi, K. ‘Making the case for the UK to Proscribe Iran’s IRGC.’ Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, January 17, 2023. https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/making-case-uk-proscribe-irans-irgc
[2] Khoshnood, A., “The Role of the Qods Force in the Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3,2020.
[3] Alam Rizvi, M. Mahtab. “Velayat-E-Faqih (Supreme Leader) and Iranian Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis,” Strategic Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2012.
[4] Khoshnood, 2020, p.8
[5] Wohlforth, William C. “Realism and foreign policy.” Foreign policy: Theories, actors, cases 3 (2008): 35-53
[6] Khoshnood, 2020. p.9
[7] Gomari-Luksch, Laleh. “Realism, rationalism and revolutionism in Iran’s foreign policy: the West, the State and Islam”, University of St Andrews, 2018.
[8] Wege, C.A., “Iranian Intelligence Organisations,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, Vol. 10, No.3, 1997.
[9] Ramazani, Ruhollah K., “Iran’s Foreign Policy: Contending Orientations,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, 1989.
[10] Khoshnood, 2020, p.17
[11] France 24, 2024 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210204-iran-diplomat-given-20-years-for-paris-bomb-plot;
Deutsche Welle, 2018 https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-foils-iranian-intelligence-agency-attack/a-46092945;
Sveriges Radio, 2021, https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/iran-suspected-of-murder-plot-against-swedish-jews;
Williams, D. Reuters, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bennett-aide-accuses-iran-attempting-attack-israelis-cyprus-2021-10-04/;
The Guardian, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/19/armed-police-guard-iranian-tv-studios-in-london-after-tehran-threats;
Stickings, T. 2024, https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/2024/03/21/iran-recruited-fugitive-hells-angel-for-arson-attack-on-german-synagogue/;
Gatopolous et al, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/greece-terrorism-arrests-12946c19a59d61edba970184b547e578;
Times of Israel, 2023, Cyprus thwarts Iranian attack targeting Jews and Israelis — reports | The Times of Israel;
Duncan, G., 2024. https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/europe/2024/05/31/sweden-iran-gangs-israel/;
Mojtahedi, N., 2024: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202405309211; Orton, D., 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/iran-responsible-attacks-israeli-embassies-sweden-belgium-says-mossad-1906232 ;
[12] Khoshnood, A. M., & Khoshnood, A., ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Use of Diplomats in Its Intelligence and Terrorist Operations against Dissidents: The Case of Assadollah Assadi.’ International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 37(3), 976–992, 2024.
[13] Ramazani, 1989, p.211
[14] Kachroo, R. ’The Wedding: Iranian spy plot to kill two news presenters in London uncovered by double agent’, ITV News, December 21, 2023. https://www.itv.com/news/2023-12-20/iran-spy-plot-to-kill-two-news-presenters-in-london-uncovered-by-double-agent
Hanna, A. & Nada, G. ‘Timeline: Iran’s Foreign Plots and Assassinations’, The Iran Primer, March 6, 2024. https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2020/sep/16/timeline-iran-assassinations-and-plot
[15] BBC, 2021. France bomb plot: Iran diplomat Assadollah Assadi sentenced to 20 years – BBC News
[16] Wege, 1997, p.290
