A tangled web leads from Golders Green ambulance attack to Tehran | Iran

From Golders Green, where four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set on fire in the early hours of Monday, a complex route probably crosses two continents to Tehran.

British researchers are cautious. Speaking at an event on Monday evening, Metropolitan police chief Sir Mark Rowley said: described He said there was a “very relevant and persistent threat” from Iran to Britain and Jewish targets in particular, but warned it was “too early” to attribute the attack in north London to Tehran.

Others, less bound by the imperatives of policing and politics, are not so cautious. In interviews, experts, law enforcement officials and others all pointed to Iran, which has been linked to a series of similar attacks in recent weeks targeting Jewish sites in Western Europe with relatively low-tech incendiary devices.

Experts stated that four days after the USA and Israel launched their attack on Iran, the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which conducts international military operations, launched an attack on Iran. warned “The enemy must know that their happy days are over and they will no longer be safe anywhere in the world, not even in their own homes.”

There have been attacks since the beginning of the last conflict. AzerbaijanKuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. All were linked to Iran by local officials.

A number of attacks also took place in Europe; all very similar to the one in Golders Green. On March 9, an improvised explosive device (IED) was detonated in front of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium; four days later another exploded outside a synagogue in Rotterdam.

Later a jewish school A commercial center in Amsterdam was also targeted with amateur firebombs. Two young people were arrested overnight between Monday and Tuesday after a car parked outside a Jewish-owned business in Antwerp was set on fire.

Much of the media coverage this week has focused on a video posted on Telegram shortly after the attack in Golders Green by a group calling itself Harakat al-Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or Islamic Movement of Righteous Companions, showing a clip of burning vehicles and claiming a “historical link” between Israel and the Machzike Hadath synagogue, where the ambulance service is located.

The Telegraph reported the emergence of “Tehran’s newest terrorist proxy”, effectively putting Harakat al-Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia on par with organizations such as Hamas, which rules half of Gaza and still has tens of thousands of members, and Hezbollah, which has an influential political wing and a powerful, though now extinct, arms arsenal. Up to 25,000 rockets and missiles and a global business network that raises large sums of money. Hamas was founded in 1987. Hezbollah, defined as a “state within a state” in Lebanon, where it is headquartered, was founded around 1983 with the help of Iran.

It is an exaggeration to compare Harakat al-Ashab al-Yemin al-Islamia to either organization, as both have close, if complex, ties to Tehran. In fact, it is very unclear whether such a group exists.

Security officials close to the investigation said the current “working assumption” is that “the group does not exist and is a front and brand invented by Iranian intelligence or the Quds force.”

Video of the Golders Green attack was first published on social media channels affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a pro-Iran Shiite militia group organized, financed, trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guard. Its name and visual branding suggest inspiration from other Shia militant groups. researchers say.

What is certain is that Iran is using unconventional attacks against its enemies around the world as a key tactic in its efforts to win ongoing low-level conflict with traditionally much stronger enemies; however, he was careful to keep evidence of his involvement in terrorism to a minimum.

“The rapid increase in Iranian state threats in recent years is very serious: hostile state surveillance activities, 20 foiled plots and, most recently, attempted attacks against the Iranian diaspora,” Rowley said. “None of this is isolated. It’s part of a rapidly changing threat landscape.”

Magnus Ranstorp, an author and veteran expert who has long tracked Iran’s relationship with extremist and terrorist groups, said Tehran has always sought to maintain “plausible deniability” since its initial involvement in the 1982 mass bombing of a U.S. military base in Lebanon and the Buenos Aires attacks in 1992 and 1994, when the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center were bombed in retaliation for Israeli attacks. Hezbollah.

But recent investigations and trials in Sweden, Greece and the United States have revealed how Iranian intelligence or Revolutionary Guard officials recruited individuals to carry out attacks, often working with criminal networks to provide manpower and resources. Last week, two Iranians were accused of conducting hostile surveillance of London’s Jewish community for Tehran.

Earlier this month, a Pakistani man Found guilty of planning murder in Brooklyn President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are part of the Iranian conspiracy. During his trial, Asif Merchant admitted that the Guard Corps tasked him with carrying out political assassinations in retaliation for the killing of their respected commander by the United States in 2020. Qassem Soleimaniand explained that he was recruited by the Guard Corps. Among many details, he said that the Iranian manager named three people during the talks in Tehran.

The attack in Golders Green is being treated as an anti-Semitic hate crime, not a terrorist incident, and it remains possible that the attack was the work of individuals or groups acting independently.

Arrives in less than six months Attack on synagogue in Manchester. According to the Community Security Trust (CST), 3,700 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the UK in 2025; this is the second highest level ever and a 4% increase on the previous year.

Ranstorp said the latest wave of attacks was not fatal. “The Iranians have a record of killing people or trying to kill people, so it’s interesting that they’re going to quite an effort not to kill anyone. They don’t need to make big statements… but it’s still about sending a message,” he said.