The announcements of the arrests of two criminal organization leaders this week in Iraq, in cooperation with Australia and Sweden, have again highlighted the use of criminal gangs to widen the reach of the Iranian Islamic regime’s jihad against Israelis, Jews, and Iranian dissidents around the world.
On Tuesday night, the Australian Federal Police and Iraqi National Center for International Judicial Cooperation (NCIJC) announced the arrest of Kadhim Malik Hamad Rabah al-Hajami, a criminal kingpin who was recognized by AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett as a “national security threat,” not only for his association with biker gangs and a tobacco shop turf war, but also for his involvement in an Iran-backed synagogue arson attack.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization alleged in August that Iran had orchestrated at least two antisemitic attacks in Australia: the December 2024 Adass Israel Synagogue arson attack in Melbourne and the October 2024 Lewis’ Continental Kitchen arson attack in Sydney. Criminal gangs were allegedly used to obscure involvement of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In October, the Mossad revealed the identity of an IRGC Quds Force commander who was allegedly responsible for orchestrating the arsons that eventually led to the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador from Australia.
Known by the Mossad as Sardar Ammar and by the FBI as Saeed Tavakoli, the commander was alleged to have been involved in covert intelligence and lethal operations against past and current US and European officials, as well as dissidents, journalists, and Israeli citizens in Australia, Greece, and Germany, and Mexico.
IRGC hires criminal gangs for global terror operations
The same day that Hamad was announced to have been arrested, the Iraqi National Intelligence Service announced on Facebook that it had conducted, in coordination with the NCIJC, a simultaneous raid in multiple provinces, arresting criminal leaders associated with the Foxtrot crime network.
Iraqi intelligence described the network as “one of the dangerous international mafias involved in many complex crimes in a number of countries around the world” and said that it had “tried to exploit Iraqi territory as a launching point for its criminal operations.”
It is still unclear if there is a connection between the arrest of Hamad and the sweep of Foxtrot criminal leaders. Relevant authorities have still not responded to Jerusalem Post queries on the matter, but Foxtrot’s presence in Iraq is another Iranian footprint, as it has repeatedly used the criminal network as a proxy to attack Israelis and Jews.
In a March statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the announcement that his government was sanctioning the Foxtrot network, the official explained that the gang was based in Sweden and carrying out prominent drug trafficking and contract killings in northern Europe, but was also “leveraged” by Iran to carry out attacks on Israeli and Jewish European targets. This allegedly included the January 2024 attack on the Israeli embassy in Sweden.
Swedish Police announced on Monday that a Foxtrot leader had been arrested in Iraq and was being extradited. While they did not identify the 21-year-old man, he was likely Europol’s most wanted one, Swedish citizen Ali Shehab Ahmed. If so, his capture is a major achievement. The suspect was wanted in Sweden for instigating several murders, attempted murders, and conspiracies to commit murder.
It is also still unclear if this timely announcement had any connection to the other arrests made in Iraq, but Swedish Police believed that the suspect’s arrest would have a significant impact on Foxtrot’s ability to operate internationally and degrade criminal organizations used by foreign countries for “crime direct against Sweden.”
The foreign countries using criminal organizations were not named by the Swedish police on Monday, but in May 2024, Stockholm announced that the Islamic regime was using criminal networks as proxies to target Iranian dissidents, Israelis, and Jews.
“Iran has earlier carried out acts of violence in other European countries in order to silence criticism and what it regards as threats to its regime,” said Sweden. “In order to carry out these security-threatening activities, the Iranian regime has sometimes made use of criminal networks. We can confirm that this is happening in Sweden as well.”
Sweden was joined by Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States in July to condemn Iranian intelligence service threats in their countries.
“We are united in our opposition to the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty,” the countries said in a joint statement. “These services are increasingly collaborating with international criminal organizations to target journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America. This is unacceptable. “
“We are united in our opposition to the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty," the countries said in a joint statement. "These Services are increasingly collaborating with international criminal organizations to target journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America. This is unacceptable. "
Several days before the statement, the UK published an Intelligence and Security Committee report detailing that Iran used proxy groups, including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organizations, and hacking groups to provide it with a means of plausible deniability when attacking enemies.
Tehran had allegedly used the method at least 15 times since 2022 to attempt to murder or kidnap Jewish or Iranian dissident UK nationals or residents. These criminals are often not aware of their broader purpose.
“They use criminal groups that you wouldn’t at all expect to be involved in this kind of activity and they are effectively just mercenaries. They are hired for money to do the operational activity for the Iranian state,” MI5 told the committee.
Foxtrot was just one of the criminal organizations used by Iran, with the UK and US alleging that Iranian narcotics trafficker Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti operates at the behest of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The Zindashti network recruited Canadian Hell’s Angels bikers to attempt the assassination of Iranian dissidents in 2021, according to the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets, and in 2020 the network allegedly abducted the leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, Habib Chaab.
The network also allegedly assassinated former Iranian cybersecurity official-turned regime critic Mas’ud Vardanjani and British-Iranian dissident Saeed Karimian in Istanbul in 2019 and 2017, respectively.
An Eastern European crime syndicate was allegedly contracted in 2022 to attempt to murder Iranian-American human rights activist Masih Alinejad.
Last November, the DOJ said that IRGC asset Farhad Shakeri had used the criminal associations he developed in prison to plan the murder of US President Donald Trump and Iranian-American human rights activist Masih Alinejad. Shakeri was also tasked by the IRGC with the surveillance and murder of two Jewish businesspeople and was asked to plan a mass shooting attack on Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.
This week’s announcements and indications of even deeper Iranian connections with criminal networks around the world, therefor,e come as no surprise. While proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah are the flagships of Iranian military efforts abroad, the Islamic regime has created a massive global force by turning criminals into armies of minutemen.