By: Fern Sidman

When Britain, the United States, France, and a dozen of their closest allies issued a coordinated statement on Thursday condemning Iran’s plots to assassinate, kidnap, and intimidate individuals on Western soil, it marked more than a diplomatic rebuke. It was a signal that intelligence services across the transatlantic alliance view Tehran’s covert activities as escalating from sporadic operations into a systemic campaign.

The announcement arrived in tandem with a new report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which presented chilling details of how Iran’s clerical regime persecutes Jews at home while deploying criminal proxies abroad to menace Jewish communities. As The Algemeiner reported on Thursday, the study documents a broad spectrum of threats: from surveillance of synagogues in Tehran to attempted bombings of Jewish centers in Europe.

For policymakers and security officials, the findings raised a stark question: Is Iran using antisemitism not merely as a domestic tool of repression, but as an instrument of international power projection?

The USCIRF report emphasized that Iran’s rulers, despite formally recognizing Judaism as a protected religion, have long cultivated a climate of hostility toward the Jewish community. According to the information provided in The Algemeiner report, Jewish houses of worship are closely monitored, Holocaust history is systematically distorted, and school curricula often frame Jews as “enemies of Islam.”

This duality — nominal recognition paired with practical repression — has forced Iran’s dwindling Jewish population into a state of constant anxiety. “Authorities have nurtured a hostile environment in which Iranian Jews feel increasingly threatened,” the report concluded.

The Algemeiner has frequently chronicled this paradox, noting that Iranian officials showcase Jewish participation in parliament to promote an image of tolerance, even while stoking antisemitic rhetoric that renders daily life precarious. For Iran’s remaining Jews, numbering fewer than 10,000, the environment is one of visibility without safety.

What makes the latest report more alarming, as The Algemeiner highlighted, is the evidence that Tehran is exporting its antisemitic ideology through operational means. Iranian intelligence services have allegedly enlisted organized crime syndicates across Europe to target Jewish centers, Israeli embassies, and community institutions such as restaurants, schools, and memorial sites.

This revelation comes on the heels of multiple foiled plots. European security agencies have, in recent years, intercepted Iranian-directed attempts to bomb Jewish cultural centers in Denmark, assassinate dissidents in France, and kidnap Israeli nationals in Turkey. While many of these incidents were prevented before blood was shed, analysts quoted by The Algemeiner warned that the pattern shows an unmistakable trajectory of escalation.

A senior European counterterrorism official, speaking on background, described the operations as “a hybrid of intelligence service tradecraft and outsourced thuggery.” Iran, he noted, is increasingly willing to contract gangs with little ideological alignment but high operational utility, thereby outsourcing risk while amplifying its reach.

In their joint statement, Western governments spoke with unusual clarity: “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 message was designed not only for Tehran but also for the domestic audiences of allied nations, where Jewish communities have grown increasingly anxious about rising antisemitic violence. By explicitly linking Iran’s operations to threats against Jews, the statement acknowledged what many Jewish leaders have long warned — that Iranian-backed activity is not confined to dissidents but extends to entire communities.

The Algemeiner has documented Iran’s history of transnational aggression against Jews and Israelis dating back decades. In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed, killing 29 people, in an attack widely attributed to Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. Two years later, the AMIA Jewish community center in the same city was devastated by another bombing, killing 85. Both cases remain touchstones of Iranian-sponsored terrorism abroad.

More recently, European authorities have tracked Hezbollah operatives stockpiling ammonium nitrate in warehouses outside London, allegedly in preparation for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets. German security services in 2020 banned Hezbollah in its entirety, citing the danger it posed to Jewish institutions.

Thursday’s statement and USCIRF’s report situate these incidents not as isolated, but as part of a continuum. The Iranian regime, analysts argue, has embedded antisemitism within its operational doctrine, treating Jewish communities abroad as legitimate pressure points in its conflict with Israel and the West.

The timing of the revelations is significant. They come as the United States escalates economic sanctions on Iran, seeking to compel Tehran back to the negotiating table over its nuclear program. As The Algemeiner reported, Washington this week targeted entities tied to Iran’s oil exports and defense industry, part of a broader strategy to maintain “maximum pressure” until Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded defiantly in an interview with the Financial Times. He dismissed calls for zero enrichment, declaring: “With zero enrichment, we don’t have a thing.” He also demanded compensation for damage inflicted during recent clashes with U.S. and Israeli forces, further complicating prospects for dialogue.

For European negotiators, the stakes are equally high. Britain, France, and Germany have warned they may trigger the “snapback” mechanism enshrined in the 2015 nuclear deal, which would restore full UN sanctions if Iran is found in breach. The Algemeiner report noted that such a move could take effect by the end of August, effectively collapsing the last vestiges of the nuclear agreement.

Analysts interviewed by The Algemeiner suggest that Iran’s overseas plots serve multiple functions. By targeting Jewish communities, the regime both advances its ideological war against Zionism and applies psychological pressure on Israel’s allies. By reaching into Europe and North America, Tehran signals that its conflict with the West cannot be confined to the Middle East.

“The use of criminal networks is particularly telling,” said one Middle East security scholar. “It lowers Iran’s operational costs while allowing plausible deniability. But the targets — synagogues, Jewish schools, community centers — reveal the ideological underpinning. This is antisemitism weaponized into foreign policy.”

For Jewish leaders across Europe, the report confirmed long-held fears. Community security organizations, already grappling with rising antisemitic incidents linked to global conflicts, now face the additional threat of state-sponsored plots.

French and German Jewish institutions have tightened security measures in recent years, often with state assistance. Yet the prospect of Iranian operatives recruiting local gangs introduces a new dimension of unpredictability. A synagogue in Paris may be well-guarded against known extremist groups, but far less prepared for an attack contracted to a local criminal syndicate.

The USCIRF report and Thursday’s joint statement also resonate historically. Antisemitism has often served as a vehicle for authoritarian regimes to channel domestic discontent and project aggression abroad. In Iran’s case, the linkage between anti-Jewish incitement and global operations underscores how deeply antisemitism is woven into the regime’s ideological fabric.

As The Algemeiner report pointed out, Tehran’s rhetoric about Jews has consistently blurred distinctions between local Jewish citizens, global Jewish communities, and the State of Israel — collapsing all into a single adversary. This conflation makes synagogues in Berlin or memorial centers in Brussels appear, in the regime’s view, as extensions of its geopolitical struggle.

What remains uncertain is whether Western condemnation will be matched by concrete action. Security officials have signaled that counterintelligence cooperation among allied nations is intensifying. Yet the Iranian regime’s blend of ideology, deniability, and global reach presents a uniquely resilient challenge.

For now, Jewish communities across the West face a reality in which international diplomacy and neighborhood security have become inseparably linked. Leaders from synagogues in London to memorial centers in Rome are pressing governments for enhanced protection and transparent communication about threats.

Ultimately, the question for policymakers is not merely how to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear enrichment, but how to contain a regime that has made antisemitism itself a weapon of foreign policy.

Thursday’s joint statement represented a line in the sand: a collective denunciation of Iran’s operations against Jewish communities and dissidents abroad. But as history demonstrates — from Buenos Aires to Berlin — Iran’s capacity for clandestine violence cannot be wished away.

The latest revelations are less a surprise than a confirmation. For Tehran, the targeting of Jews is not an aberration but a pattern, one that entwines domestic repression with global projection. And for Western governments, the challenge is both immediate and enduring: to safeguard vulnerable communities today, while confronting the broader ideological machinery that renders them perpetual targets.