Political Assassinations by Iran's Islamic Regime

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Dr. Ardavan Khoshnood - Politico revealed on Sep. 13 that Iran was plotting to assassinate U.S. ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks, who is Jewish, citing U.S. intelligence. Dozens of Iranians were assassinated both inside the country and abroad over the decade between 1988 and 1998, during the presidency of AliAkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, both deemed to be reformists. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, more than 160 Iranians in exile have been assassinated by regime operatives all over the world. Iran has made extensive use of its diplomatic arm for subversive activities like espionage, assassinations, and terrorist plots. Investigating the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires, Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman reported that the Third Secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Argentina, Ahmad Reza Asghari, was directly involved in the decision to attack AMIA. Nisman concluded that the AMIA attack "was carried out by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizbullah at the behest of the highest authorities in the Iranian government, and with local assistance from Iranian diplomats who were accredited in Argentina." Israel's embassies as well as its ambassadors and diplomats are high-priority targets for the Islamic regime in Tehran. In 2012, it engineered attacks against Israeli diplomats in Azerbaijan, India, Georgia, Thailand, and Turkey. The writer, an Associate at the BESA Center, is a criminologist, political scientist, and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Lund University in Sweden.


2020-12-28 00:00:00

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