Iran is hiring children to attack Israeli targets in Europe

Stockholm: A 15-year-old boy gets into a taxi outside Stockholm hiding a loaded gun and asks to be taken to the Israeli embassy. A 13-year-old on the other side of the country in Gothenburg is caught firing shots at Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems. At the same facility, a 16-year-old helps to plant homemade explosives outside the main entrance.

Investigators say all three attacks this year are part of a new trend in which Iran-affiliated actors recruit local criminals, including minors, to strike at Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe. The Iranian mission at the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Police secure the area near the Israeli embassy in Stockholm after a suspected shooting on October 1.Credit: AFP

The incidents show how the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies across the Middle East is also driving Tehran to escalate its covert operations in Europe – and that is rattling governments already concerned that the conflict is stirring tensions between communities already divided over immigration.

In the recent northern autumn, both Swedish and Norwegian security services warned against Iranian-backed operations, and in October Norway temporarily raised its terror alert to high from medium, armed its police and set up controls on the border with its Scandinavian neighbour.

In Brussels in May, the security services found children as young as 14 orchestrating an attack on the Israeli embassy. Britain’s MI5 has also issued warnings of an increase in Iran-linked attacks. But the Nordic countries are particularly vulnerable.

They have traditionally been open societies with minimal policing and high trust. But now international crime gangs have taken root among the poorer and often immigrant-dominated communities. Anger among some groups at the number of civilians killed by Israel’s military in Gaza and Lebanon has made it easier to find recruits, officials said.

People acting on behalf of the Iranian regime reach out to potential mercenaries on platforms such as Telegram, TikTok or WhatsApp, says Peter Nesser, a terrorism researcher at Norway’s Defence Research Establishment. Prices start from about €1500 ($2502) for a murder, Nesser says. A petrol bomb attack can cost as little as €120, says someone who has tracked the illicit trade.

“If that’s the case, the execution will probably have the signs of an amateur,” Nesser says. Operatives also use the apps to direct and advise recruits during their illegal operations, he says.

Some 14 months into Israel’s devastating response to the deadly October 2023 attacks by Hamas, the Islamic Republic’s militant allies – including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria’s ousted President Bashar al-Assad – have been severely weakened or washed away.

Yet crippling a network that’s defined Iran’s regional policy for almost half a century hasn’t lessened the threat of Iranian-backed attacks in Europe, says a senior European official who follows the issue.

While some of the young people are motivated by frustration at what they see as Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, others are driven simply by money, and sometimes the young perpetrators have no idea what they are signing up for. If they are under 15, they can’t be prosecuted in either Sweden or Norway.

“There are cases where the proxies aren’t aware or don’t realise that they are acting on behalf of a foreign power,” the Swedish Security Service said in a statement earlier this year.

The boy who targeted the Israelis in Stockholm in May didn’t know where the embassy was when the taxi picked him up, police reports say. He had to call someone else to ask for the address when the driver asked where they were going. Police had been tracking his movements and stopped the cab before he reached his destination.

On October 1, Swedish police rushed to the same embassy building after shots were reported, but they arrived too late to catch the perpetrator. Police reports put the suspect on a southbound train to Copenhagen, which later that night was rocked by two loud explosions close to Israel’s mission in the Danish capital. Security officials say they believed the man was also recruited by Iran.

The 16-year-old who attacked Elbit Systems in May used two thermos flasks packed with explosives and was charged alongside a 23-year-old accomplice. While the investigation was unable to uncover who gave them instructions or transferred money to them, the prosecutor in the case said it seemed clear they were acting on behalf of someone else.

For years, Sweden has been struggling with the increasing presence of organised crime gangs that seek to recruit youngsters from its immigrant communities.

More than 1.5 million people have moved to the country since 1980 and now about 20 per cent of the population were born outside the country. Many struggle to assimilate.

In a recent survey, 40 per cent of migrants said they do not feel integrated into Swedish society. The dwindling welfare state and much higher poverty rates in immigrant neighbourhoods make recruitment easier for criminal gangs and, increasingly, hostile actors such as Iran.

Now there are concerns in Norway that those problems are spreading across the 1600-kilometre open border that separates the two countries. Warnings about “Swedish conditions” have become commonplace in the political debate in Oslo, where officials are starting to see the same patterns that have taken hold in Sweden and Denmark.

In Sweden, the mounting alarm over immigration and public safety has helped fuel support for the far-right Sweden Democrats, the second-largest party in parliament and a key backer of conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s minority government. With the help of the far-right, Kristersson has introduced youth prisons for children under 15.

Norway faces its own elections in less than a year, and Social-Democratic Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store has prioritised youth crime, promising stricter handling of the most serious offences. The far-right opposition Progress Party, which is leading in the polls, wants to go further and, following the Swedish approach, make it possible to lock up 15-year-olds.

Bloomberg