Iran’s War on European Jews:
Spy Charges in London, Army on the
Streets of Brussels, IS Plot
Foiled in Paris
Since the start of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, Europe’s Jewish communities have faced a coordinated, multi-front campaign of surveillance, bombing, and incitement — directed or inspired by Iranian networks and claimed by a new Iran/Hezbollah-linked group. Antisemitic messages on social media nearly doubled in five days. Governments are finally responding.
Three Countries, One Campaign: Iran’s Multi-Front War Against European Jewish Communities
Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, Jewish communities across Europe have been targeted in a coordinated, multi-front campaign of surveillance, bombings, foiled plots, and a tsunami of online hatred. This is not a series of coincidences. It is a pattern — sustained, escalating, and bearing the operational and ideological fingerprints of Iranian state intelligence and the networks it deploys, funds, and directs across Europe.
In London, two Iranian men have been charged under the National Security Act with spying on the Jewish community on behalf of Iran — gathering surveillance on Jewish sites as a likely precursor to attacks. In Belgium, the army has been deployed to patrol approximately 20 Jewish sites following a synagogue bombing claimed by a new Iran/Hezbollah-linked group. In France, police have foiled a plot against Jewish targets by Islamic State supporters. And across all four countries where Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya has been active, the pattern of targeting is the same: Jewish institutions, Jewish communities, Jewish lives.
Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya: Logo, Rhetoric, and the Iran-Hezbollah Connection
A new terrorist group calling itself the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right — Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya — has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on Jewish targets across Europe in the weeks since the Iran war began. Its logo and rhetoric suggest close ties to Iran and Hezbollah. It is not a Sunni jihadi organization. Its branding, its targets, and the channels through which it distributes its propaganda all point toward a Shiite, Iran-aligned operational network.
Violent Messages Targeting Jews Nearly Doubled in Five Days
The physical attacks are the visible edge of a wave. Behind them is a surge in online hatred — antisemitic content, incitement, and conspiracy theory narratives — that has flooded social media platforms since the start of U.S.-Israel strikes against Iran.
London: The IRGC’s Surveillance Network for Jewish Community Targeting
The charges against Nematollah Shahsavani and Alireza Farasati represent a rare public confirmation of what intelligence services have been warning about privately for years: that Iran maintains an active surveillance and targeting infrastructure within the United Kingdom, specifically directed at the Jewish community. These are not simply two individuals who happened to wander near Jewish buildings. They are charged with a sustained, deliberate operation of reconnaissance — gathering information “likely to assist a foreign intelligence service” between July and August 2024.
British security services have foiled approximately 20 Iran-linked terror plots in the UK in recent years, according to Defence Secretary John Healey. The charges against Shahsavani and Farasati are part of a pattern, not an anomaly. And the pattern is clear: Iran maintains a long-standing network specifically targeting Jewish and Israeli interests in the United Kingdom — a network that accelerates its operations whenever geopolitical tension between Iran and the West increases.
Security officials say the Iran war has contributed to an unusually high threat environment for Jews around the world, with law enforcement stepping up surveillance of Jewish sites to protect them from threats that have not been this acute since before the Abraham Accords.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency · March 19, 2026For All These Reasons — Belgian and British Authorities Acted. The Rest of Europe Must Follow.
For all these reasons — the spy charges in London, the army deployment in Belgium, the IS plot in France, the bombings in the Netherlands, the doubling of online hate — the Belgian and British authorities took emergency measures to protect Jewish sites and schools. These responses are welcome. They are also, frankly, overdue in some cases, and insufficient in others. A military patrol and spy charges are responses to threats that have already materialized. The goal must be to prevent them from materializing in the first place.
This requires the European Union to formally designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization — ending the legal ambiguity that allows its networks to operate with impunity in member states. It requires member state intelligence agencies to share information about Iranian-linked networks more aggressively and in real time. It requires platform companies to act against the surge in antisemitic content — not after five days, but immediately. And it requires every European government to understand that Jewish communities are not a special interest group requiring extra attention. They are European citizens. Their safety is not negotiable.
As FFN Chief Executive and as someone who has dedicated my work to the protection of religious and ethnic minorities across Europe and the MENA region, I have been documenting this wave with a growing sense of alarm and a fierce conviction that the international response has been consistently slower than the threat demands.
Iran is waging a war on European Jewish communities. It is waging it through sleeper cells, through “foot soldiers” recruited via criminal networks, through surveillance operatives embedded in diaspora communities, through proxy groups with Kalashnikov logos posting on Hezbollah-linked Telegram channels, and through a flood of online incitement designed to radicalize the unstable and encourage the violent. This is not a series of random incidents. It is a campaign. And Europe must respond to it as one.
Every Jewish child who approaches their school with fear, every community that removes its mezuzah from the door, every worshipper who hesitates before entering a synagogue — they represent a failure of the societies that claim to have learned from history. Europe knows where antisemitic violence leads. It has no excuse not to stop it.
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