When the United States ignited a war against Iran in February, counterterrorism analysts braced for reprisal attacks outside the Middle East. What materialized was a string of about 20 small-scale arson and bombing attacks against Jewish and American targets in Europe and North America. Then, a week ago, outside a British air base that Iran had branded a “legitimate target,” the police arrested and later released five men in a murky plot that counterterrorism experts said echoed the previous pattern.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain said there were “strong indications that Iran played a part,” and a British-Iranian national was also arrested. Over the weekend, the U.S. rapidly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from the air base after new threats about an Iran-backed plot, two U.S. officials said on Sunday. Separately, the British counterterrorism police charged two Iranian men on Friday in a suspected terrorist plot targeting Jews in the Manchester area.
While the previous attacks often occurred at night, with no loss of life and often superficial damage, an assault on an air base would represent a serious escalation, experts said. “That would be a jump in ambition and an evolution of the proxy campaign,” said Adrian Shtuni, a counterterrorism expert and security consultant based in Washington. This style of terrorist attack is sometimes referred to as the “gig economy hybrid model of warfare.”
The earlier attacks all followed a similar model, carried out by local criminals or disenfranchised young men hired through anonymous online transactions and paid in cryptocurrency. The attacks stopped in May, after an Iraqi man suspected of being the organizer was arrested in Turkey and extradited to the United States. The suspect indicted in the United States, Mohammad Baqer al-Saadi, was identified as a high-ranking figure in Kataib Hezbollah.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing