Iran’s terror and financial networks run deep in the U.S.
By Lorenzo Vidino
Since the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, American authorities have publicly raised concerns about the Islamic Republic, and its proxies and allies, attempting to carry out attacks inside the U.S. These warnings echo many raised over the past decades, as Tehran has a long history of attempting to carry out terrorist operations on American soil. Its first lethal operation inside the U.S. dates back to 1980, just a few months after the Islamic revolution, when Tehran successfully ordered the assassination of a leading Iranian dissident in Bethesda, MD.
The regime’s opponents have long been targeted by the Iranian regime in the U.S. In recent years, for example, the New York-based Iranian human rights activist, Masih Alinejad, was the target of at least two separate plots conceived by Iranian intelligence to kill her in Brooklyn. Iran has also conspired to use U.S. territory to assassinate leading Middle East and American diplomats, politicians and government officials.
In 2011, for example, Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Iranian origin, plotted with members of the Los Zetas - Mexican drug cartel - to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, by planting a bomb in a fashionable Georgetown restaurant. Arbabsiar was arrested by federal agents and confessed that his cousin, a senior member of Iran’s elite IRGC Qods Force, directed him to carry out the hit. According to the Department of Justice, Arbabsiar “was recruited, funded, and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran’s Qods Force.”
Iran’s plots on American soil have escalated over the last few years, largely in reaction to the “maximum pressure” campaign pursued by successive Trump administrations and the January 2020 drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful military commander, IRGC-QF General Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s stated policy to avenge Soleimani led to the FBI uncovering a series of lethal plots against former Trump Administration officials, including ex-national security advisor, John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump himself.
Most of these Iranian plots inside the U.S. appear to have been outsourced by the Islamic Republic to hired guns: a function of both necessity and a desire to maintain plausible deniability. These rental assassins appear to be mainly street thugs or criminal gangs that aren’t necessarily ideologically aligned with the Islamic Republic or particularly adept or professional: but they’ll kill for a fee.
Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran’s oldest and most established overseas proxy, is also a prime candidate to carry out attacks inside the U.S. The Program on Extremism’s research has identified 142 U.S.-based individuals who have been prosecuted for Hezbollah-related activities since 2000. Most provided financial assistance to Hezbollah and were engaged in money laundering and other financial crimes; but around 13% of the prosecutions have been related to individuals who were proven to have been involved in operational support for terrorist attacks.
“Iran typically relies on individuals with preexisting access to the United States for surveillance and lethal plotting,” U.S. law enforcement authorities have stressed. “The arrests of individuals in the United States allegedly linked to Hezbollah’s main overseas terrorist arm and their intelligence collection and procurement efforts, demonstrate Hezbollah’s interest in long-term contingency planning activities here in our homeland.”
However Iran’s proxy networks inside the U.S. soil are larger than Hezbollah and focused on more than terror. Some have focused for decades on helping Iran evade sanctions and procuring sensitive equipment for the Islamic Republic’s military and nuclear programs. These schemes have been valued by U.S. authorities in the hundreds of millions of dollars and operate through a sophisticated network of overseas front companies.
The U.S. is also home to a broad web of entities and individuals supportive of the Islamic Republic on purely ideological grounds. These include mosques, Islamic centers, religious schools, progressive student groups and private individuals with financial and organizational ties to the Iranian regime. These entities often propagandize for the Islamic Republic and promote Tehran’s anti-American, anti-Zionist and antisemitic world views.
The New York-based Alavi Foundation is arguably Tehran’s most potent vehicle through which to propagate the regime’s influence inside the U.S. With a multimillion-dollar budget, the foundation either owns directly, or funds through grants, zero-interest loans, and donations, a broad array of entities nationwide that disseminate Tehran’s talking points. In 2017, the Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Alavi, arguing that it “secretly served as a front for the Iranian government and as a gateway for millions of dollars to be funneled to Iran in clear violation of U.S. sanctions laws.” A jury found Alavi guilty, but the judgment was overturned by an appellate court on procedural grounds, and the legal battle is ongoing.
The Program on Extremism’s research identified more than a dozen organizations inside the U.S. that disseminate pro-Iranian regime and pro-Hezbollah viewpoints. They also own and operate schools and mosques that host radical preachers who weave anti-American and antisemitic views through their teachings and literature. Some of the most important are based in Houston, New York and Potomac, Maryland.
Dearborn, Michigan is a particularly important hub for Iran, as it hosts several of the most prominent and radical institutions in the U.S. Many of the individuals involved maintain close connections to the Iranian regime, frequently traveling to Tehran and cooperating with Iranian soft power organizations, like the Ahlul Bayt World Assembly and Al-Mustafa International University.
Last week, some media outlets focused on a mosque in Manassas, Virginia, which publicly mourned Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after he was killed on March 1 by a U.S. airstrike. But the ceremony isn’t surprising: Many of the Islamic Republic-aligned institutions identified in our research regularly host pro-regime events: like the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution; a memorial for the death of Iran’s revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; ceremonies glorifying the lives of Qassem Soleimani and Hezbollah’s spiritual leader Hussein Fadlallah; and Quds Day, a day of protest against Israel.
Particularly troubling is the presence of Islamic schools, some of them receiving state funding, in the suburbs of various American cities that teach the Iranian regime’s interpretation of Islam and political worldview to scores of American children. Many of these activities are protected by the First Amendment. But there is no question that U.S. law enforcement authorities should be paying close attention to the broad Iranian network inside the country.