Iran and state-sponsored terrorism
[1] These proxies are used by Iran across the Middle East and Europe to foment instability, expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution, and carry out terrorist attacks against Western targets in the regions.
Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, is known to provide arms, training, and financial support to militias and political movements across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.
The Iranian government has been accused by the United States of harbouring several al-Qaeda leaders within their country despite mutual hostility between the two and their proxy groups and affiliates.
[13] In 1995, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard held a conference in Beirut with organizations accused of engaging in terrorism including the Japanese Red Army, the Armenian Secret Army, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Iraqi Da'wah Party, the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain and Hezbollah for the sole purpose of providing training and weapons to these organizations, to aid in the destabilization of Gulf states, and give assistance to militants in these countries to replace the existing governments with Iran-aligned regimes.
As a result, Albania officially severed diplomatic ties with Iran[24][25] and ordered Iranian embassy staff to leave the country, citing the cyberattacks.
[26][27] On 30 September 2015, Bahraini security forces discovered a large bomb-making factory in Nuwaidrat and arrested a number of suspects linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The next day, 1 October, Bahrain recalled its ambassador to Iran and asked the Iranian acting charge d’affaires to leave the kingdom within 72 hours after he was declared persona non-grata.
The Bahraini interior ministry said the cell was planning to carry out a “series of dangerous bombings” on the kingdom, and that many members were arrested including the group's leaders, 33-year-old twins Ali and Mohammed Fakhrawi.
Many believe the group promotes the Iranian agenda and that its goal is to overthrow the moderate governments in the Middle East and create Islamic Republics based on that of Iran as well as the destruction of Israel.
[60] Iran has supplied them with substantial amounts of financial, training, weapons (including long range rockets), explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid while persuading Hezbollah to take action against Israel.
“When we captured the leaders of these so-called special groups … and the deputy commander of a Lebanese Hezbollah department that was created to support their efforts in Iraq, we’ve learned a great deal about how Iran has, in fact, supported these elements and how those elements have carried out violent acts against our forces, Iraqi forces and innocent civilians.”[70] In 2015, Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent accused the Popular Mobilization Units, an organization of 40 mainly-Shi'ite militias (some backed by Iran) of committing extensive atrocities against Sunni civilians in the course of their war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, including "burning people alive in their houses, playing soccer with severed human heads, and ethnically cleansing and razing whole villages to the ground."
"[74] Aggrey Adoli, police chief in Kenya's coastal region, said on 22 June 2012 that two Iranians, Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi, believed to be members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force,[7] were arrested and suspected of being involved in terrorism.
Argentina accused Tehran in 2006 of being behind the attacks, and indicted several senior Iranian officials, including Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ahmad Vahidi, as well as Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyah.
In October 2018 France froze Iranian financial assets in response to an alleged bomb plot to be carried out against an opposition group at a rally in Paris.
Court documents allege that Assadi was ordered by Iranian authorities to smuggle the explosives into Europe on a commercial flight, and give them to Saadouni and Naami, who were arrested two days later.
Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami and a fourth man, Belgian-Iranian poet Merhad Arefani, who was arrested in Paris and accused of being an accomplice, were convicted of taking part in the plot and given jail terms of 15 to 18 years.
[81] In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice charged an Iranian operative (Shahram Poursafi) with "plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump's national security advisor John Bolton.
Guaidó also said that Soleimani "led a criminal and terrorist structure in Iran that for years caused pain to his people and destabilized the Middle East, just as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis did with Hezbollah.
[95][96] Iranian government also entered into an agreement with al-Qaeda to supply the organization with financial support, weaponry, and explosives through the involvement of Lebanese Hezbollah group.
[106][107][108] In January 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of allowing al-Qaeda to establish their base of operations within the country, though they denied the claim.
Prior to their meetings with Iranian officials and agents Bin Laden and al Qaeda did not possess the technical expertise required to carry out the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
"[116] The U.S. indictment of bin Laden filed in 1998 stated that al-Qaeda "forged alliances ... with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies.
"[93] On May 31, 2001, Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes wrote in The Wall Street Journal that "Officials of the Iranian government helped arrange advanced weapons and explosives training for Al-Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings.
[93][118] The report also found "circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000.
"[118] According to Seth G. Jones and Peter Bergen, the 2003 Riyadh compound bombings were planned by al Qaeda operatives in Iran, with apparent support from the Iranian government.
[59] British journalist Abdel Bari Atwan asserted in 2006 that Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch regarded Shia civilians as "legitimate targets for acts of violence".
During the early Iraqi insurgency, Al-Qaeda in Iraq publicly declared war against the Iran-backed Badr Brigades, a group which was co-operating with the United States during that time.
According to longtime Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Bruce Riedel: "Rather than being secretly in bed with each other as some have argued, al Qaeda had a fairly hostile relationship with the Iranian regime.
