Iranian cyber group targets US swing states

Staring into a camera for a post on X, she pinned a mythological symbol evoking Iran's ancient glory onto her shirt and tied back her flowing hair - a symbol of female freedom in the crosshairs of hijab laws back home.

Speaking to Iran International, Gazelle described herself as being in flight or fight mode and not yet fully grasping the loss of her father, Jamshid Sharmahd.

“I'm not feeling anything. I'm just in shock,” she said.

She is haunted by questions and demands proof of her father’s death.

“How did they execute him? Was he poisoned? Did he die under torture?”

According to high-ranking German authorities the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic alleged that “Jimmy died” but the lawyers of his family are still awaiting verification of what really happened.

Gazelle said her father was an activist and journalist who opposed the Islamic Republic and fought them using his expertise as a software engineer to create a website where Iranians inside the country could report human rights abuses.

He created VPNs and helped secure IP addresses so they wouldn’t get tracked by the government, Gazelle said.

Authorities accused him of terrorism for allegedly orchestrating a series of deadly bomb attacks inside Iran. He had been living in the United States for the past two decades.

Gazelle and leading human rights experts have denied the charges, saying confessions at his trial were made under duress and that his activism and criticism of the Islamic Republic made him a target.

A United Nations human rights expert in 2022 described Jamshid’s detention as arbitrary, and Amnesty International referred to his trial as a sham.

Fear beyond borders
Jamshid Sharmahd's case represents the peril faced by Iranian dissidents far beyond its borders.

In 2020, journalist Ruhollah Zam, a French citizen, was executed in Iran after being lured from Paris to Iraq under the guise of working on a story.

In February 2024, US authorities charged an Iranian national allegedly operating on behalf of the Iran to kill dissidents abroad, and two Canadian men with ties to the Hells Angels biker gang were arrested in an alleged plot to carry out assassinations in Maryland.

Outspoken human rights activist Masih Alinejad was one of them.

In 2021, the FBI thwarted an alleged kidnapping plot against Alinejad and an alleged assassination attempt the following year. The FBI said both plots were linked to Iran.

Criminal gangs operating on the behest of the Islamic Republic of Iran are behind a string of terror attacks on Israeli embassies in Europe since October 7, according to Israeli and Swedish Intelligence agencies.

Abducted in real time

Jamshid was sentenced to death in 2022 for “corruption on Earth,” sparking condemnation from human rights groups and Western governments.

The 69-year-old suffered from Parkinson’s disease and grew up in Germany and spent most of his adult life raising his family in the United States. While on a layover in Dubai in 2020, he was abducted from his hotel by Iranian agents.

Gazelle said she saw the entire kidnapping unfold from her father’s google tracker.

“We could see how his taken from his hotel room to the border to Oman to the coast of Oman. And then the tracker breaks off,” she said.

The German government announced Thursday that it would close three Islamic Republic consulates in response to the execution of the dual citizen. Germany’s foreign minister called it an assassination.

In an email to Iran International, a US State Department spokesperson said the US joins Germany in condemning his execution and supports their move in shutting down Tehran's consulates.

“Sharmahd’s execution was an abhorrent act by the Iranian regime and underscores that the record pace of unjust executions in Iran continues unabated, despite Iran’s attempts to promote a gentler face to the international community.”

Gazelle said she doesn’t need kind words and condolences and feels abandoned by both governments.

She questions why the Biden administration did not include her father in a 2023 prisoner swap that freed 5 American citizens. Now, it's too late, she lamented.

As she tries to process her loss, she said she will continue to call for justice and keep up what she described as her father’s legacy.

“He never will give up and we will never give up. You cannot break a freedom fighter.”

"Iranian security forces struck several terrorist teams in Sistan-Baluchestan province during the ongoing 'Martyrs of Security' drill by the IRGC Ground Force," said General Shafaei, the spokesperson for the exercises.

"Eight members from four terrorist teams were arrested, while four were killed".

The operation came less than a week after the insurgent Sunni Baloch group Jaish al-Adl killed ten Iranian border guards in Taftan County.

The Jaish al-Adl attack was condemned by the United Nations Security Council as a "cowardly terrorist attack."

Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province has been the site of numerous attacks attributed to Jaish al-Adl, a group known for its history of ambushes, bombings, and other violent operations, resulting in the deaths of both civilians and security personnel.

Jaish al-Adl advocates for an independent Balochistan that encompasses Baloch populations on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. The group has conducted numerous armed attacks in Iran's southeast.

In January, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched missile and drone attacks against the militant group's bases inside Pakistani territory, a rare cross-border attack which outraged Pakistani officials and prompted Islamabad to launch airstrikes against several locations in southeastern Iran.

The report coincides with diplomatic tensions between Berlin and Tehran, following the execution of German-Iranian citizen Jamshid Shahrmad on October 28.

Bild previously reported that the Berlin-based Al-Mustafa Institute is a key focus of German authorities as they investigate whether it serves as a recruitment platform for Tehran.

In its latest report, partially titled "Mullahs are Spying in Germany," Bild claims that German investigators are examining three secret lists of names. These reportedly include a list of 63 individuals holding German passports, a student directory from the international Al-Mustafa University containing 551 people connected to Germany, and a list of 78 trainees from Germany. The newspaper did not disclose the source behind this report, stating only that it relied on information in its possession.

The German domestic intelligence agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Iran International.

When asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV), Isabelle Kalbitzer, told Iran International she could not provide further details on the matter. She added that inquiries regarding potential actions, such as a ban on the Berlin-based Institute, should be directed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's clerical establishment has used religious organizations to bolster its influence in the West, with the Al-Mustafa International University playing a key role through its branches in numerous countries, including Germany.

The Al-Mustafa Institute in Berlin, founded in 2016, requests donations via PayPal on its website to "directly support projects that aim to make well-founded Islamic knowledge more accessible in German-speaking regions."

In 2020, the US sanctioned the Iran-based university, noting that the Quds Force—the overseas operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—utilized the university's foreign branches for "intelligence collection and operations," including recruiting for pro-Iranian militias. The US Treasury said the University was also being sanctioned for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of the Quds Force. The Quds Force is known to be a significant financial backer of terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

In 2023, the dean of Iran's Al-Mustafa University publicly said that some officials of the new Taliban rule in Afghanistan have studied at the institution.

When asked to comment on the claims in Bild’s report, Julia Linner, a spokeswoman for Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND), told Iran International, “As a matter of principle, the [BND] never publicly comments on matters that concern potential intelligence information or activities. This does not amount to a statement on the accuracy of the facts. The [BND] reports to the Federal Government and the competent secret committees of the German parliament on relevant topics.”

In response to Bild’s report, conservative members of the opposition parties in Germany’s parliament have called for action, saying Interior Minister Nancy Faeser should shut down the Al-Mustafa Institute.

Christian Social Union MP Alexander Dobrindt said, “Iranian Islamist institutes on German soil should be closed immediately.” He emphasized that the threat from Iran is “obvious” and added, “The interior minister must no longer ignore this.” Dobrindt urged Faeser to “immediately ban these facilities.”

Christian Democratic Union MP Christoph de Vries, an expert on intelligence services, said that Faeser must explain “why she hasn’t closed the Mustafa Institute in Berlin long ago, while the organization has been on the sanctions lists in the USA and Canada for years.”

Iranian-German dissidents have also urged the federal government to close the Al-Mustafa Institute.

Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a political scientist and expert on the Islamic Republic, told Iran International that the Al-Mustafa Institute “is apparently not a religious university, but an Iranian-Islamist propaganda center that is run by the Quds Force unit of the Revolutionary Guards. There are said to be around seventy centers worldwide and the task of these centers is to attract international forces for terrorist activities in Europe and to recruit worldwide.”

“This means that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's networks will be expanded worldwide in such centers. Apart from this, spies were trained, recruited and led by the Quds Force unit in this center. Such spies obviously have the task of spying on Iranian exiles and opposition members or other objects that may be important for the totalitarian Islamist dictatorship and possibly defining them as terrorist targets,” he added.

The IRGC has been designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, including the US and most recently by Canada.

Wahdat-Hagh, who supports the closure of the Institute in Berlin, also noted that “it is closely involved and works together with the banned Islamic Center Hamburg and more importantly with the University of Religions and Denominations, which also has a close cooperation with German universities.”

In July, Germany shut down the Imam Ali Mosque, operated by the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), for propagating extremism.

Activist Mina Ahadi, who lives in Cologne, told Iran International the “Mustafa Institute is part of the Iranian regime” and she and others have protested against its existence.

She added the Mustafa Institute “seeks to win over people from Lebanon and Afghanistan and turn them into terrorists.” She said some of these recruits have been sent to fight in Syria on behalf of the pro-Iran government Assad regime.

According to Wahdat-Hagh, “Such centers in Iran and around the world also ideologically train Islamist forces in order to join pro-Iranian terrorist groups such as Fatemiyoun, an Afghan paramilitary unit led by the Quds Forces that have experience in Syria, or the Pakistani pro-Iranian Zainebiyoun, or even the Houthis. They are propaganda centers for the export of the Islamic revolution, that is, for the export of terrorism.”

Ahadi, who has been targeted due to her opposition to the Iranian state, says she believes there are far more than the reported 700 spies working for the Mustafa Institute

Iran International sent requests for comment to the Al-Mustafa Institute, but they were not returned.

"If the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an existential threat, we would have no choice but to adjust our military doctrine," Former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi said in an interview with the pro-Tehran channel.

"We already have the technical capabilities to produce weapons; only a religious decree forbidding nuclear weapons prevents us from doing so," he added, referring to a religious decree by the country's ultimate decision maker Ali Khamenei.

Kharrazi heads the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations and has hinted before that Iran could ditch its stated opposition to acquiring nuclear weapons but was offering his first public remarks since Israeli air strikes on Iran on Oct. 26.

Members of the body he leads are by handpicked by Khamenei and its reports and advisories have often presaged major policy shifts by the ruling system.

Iran has maintained that it will not pursue nuclear arms because the 2010 fatwa banned all weapons of mass destruction including nuclear bombs. The decree could potentially be interpreted by Iranian decision-makers as an advisory opinion lacking legal status, however.

Israel launched air strikes on military targets in Iran over the weekend in response to a missile barrage Tehran fired on the Jewish state on Oct. 1.

The attack hit missile facilities and air defense capabilities, killing four Iranian soldiers and a civilian.

Kharrazi told Al Mayadaeen that Iran would seek to expand the reach of weapons. "There’s a possibility that Iran may increase its missile range," he said.

Upping Iran's official rhetoric, all three top leaders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday said a damaging counterstrike to Israel by Tehran was assured.

"The issue of infiltration in Iran has become serious in recent years. In my opinion, there has been some neglect over the years. Although the country’s security sectors have dealt blows to these activities, they haven’t been able to prevent all of them. In any case, it’s an important matter that they are currently pursuing with various precautionary measures,” Larijani said in a lengthy interview with Khabar Online website in Tehran.

He cited the assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran over the past fourteen years as potential examples of Israeli infiltration, along with the targeted killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

Larijani and his two brothers were influential figures within Iran’s ruling establishment until 2020, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sidelined them from key political positions. His media appearance at a juncture when confrontation with Israel is intense, could signal his desire to become more visible on the political arena.

Larijani also blamed the United States for the October 26 Israeli air strikes on Iran, which reportedly crippled its air defense capabilities. This now allows Israel to conduct additional strikes, if necessary, with reduced risk to its air assets. Facing a difficult situation, Iran is now threatening retaliation.

"In the situation we find ourselves in, we must first acknowledge that this confrontation was initiated by the Americans and Israelis. The Americans are the active players, while the Israelis act as their tools. In this recent aggression against Iran, it has become evident that the Americans provided both the intelligence and the equipment to the Israelis," the former parliament speaker said. Other Iranian officials have also blamed the since the October 26 air strike.

Larijani also defended Iran’s policy of having proxy forces beyond its borders, saying it is justified on the grounds of defending national interests, an argument often voiced by Iranian officials. "Defending your national security beyond your own borders is not a weakness; it’s a strength. Of course, it comes with consequences. You must accept the costs involved, but you also reap the benefits in return."

In fact, the supposed benefits of proxy wars are increasingly coming into question, as Israel weakens Hamas and Hezbollah, forcing the Islamic Republic into a defensive stance within its own borders.

Asked about the impact of targeted killings by Israel that has eliminated dozens of top and middle ranking Hezbollah, Hamas and IRGC officers and operatives, Larijani conceded that it is a serious issue.

"It certainly has an impact, but a distinction must be made between two levels. In the short term, it’s a loss—no doubt about it. In the case of certain individuals, it’s also a long-term loss." Larijani spoke about Qasem Soleimani’s targeted killing by the US in January 2020, characterizing it as a major loss.

"Like Haj Qasem, like Mr. Nasrallah himself. The martyrdom of these individuals is a long-term loss, meaning they cannot be easily replaced. However, what’s important is recognizing the difference between short-term and long-term losses,” he said. The loss of younger cadres in Gaza or Lebanon is also damaging, but Israel and the West do not realize that these are just young fighters who will be replaced, Larijani argued.