When a synagogue is firebombed or a Jewish school is targeted in Europe, the instinct is to reach for a familiar explanation: the rising tide of anti-Semitism, the radicalized lone wolf, the unhinged fringe. That explanation is no longer adequate. What is unfolding now in the UK and across Europe is not a spontaneous eruption of hatred. It seems now to be a coordinated campaign by Iran designed to make Jewish life feel existentially unsafe.
The group behind this campaign calls itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyyah, a previously unknown organization that emerged this month claiming a bomb attack outside the Synagogue of Liège on March 9, an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam and an explosive attack on a Jewish school in Amsterdam. The group has also claimed an attack in Greece, though that claim remains unverified.
To understand who is likely behind Ashab al-Yamin, remember that Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, responsible for building and directing a network of proxies across the Middle East including Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The group’s name, logo and online aesthetics bear a striking resemblance to those very Iraqi armed groups and Hezbollah. Its claims have been widely disseminated across Telegram channels linked to Iran’s Axis of Resistance.
Now the threat has reached London. On Monday, four Hatzola ambulances were set on fire in Golders Green, a borough known for its large Jewish population. A video bearing Ashab al-Yamin’s logo has emerged claiming responsibility for the attack. My initial assessment is that its involvement must be examined seriously.
The infrastructure for this kind of operation is well-established. MI5 Director General Ken McCallum revealed last year that since January 2022, British authorities have confronted 20 Iranian-backed plots targeting UK citizens and residents, with Tehran making extensive use of criminals as proxies, from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks.
The Washington Institute has said that over half of all known Iranian external operations in Europe since 1979 occurred between 2021 and 2024. The IRGC is accused having used organized crime networks in Sweden to attack the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, contracted operatives to plan synagogue attacks in Germany, and paid criminals as little as €1,000 to photograph Jewish targets in Paris and Munich.
Ashab al-Yamin may represent a variation on this template. Rather than relying on established criminal networks, Iran may be leveraging loosely connected or locally recruited operatives motivated by ideology or conflict-fueled grievance. The facade group structure is itself well-documented from the Iraqi theater, where Iran-aligned networks have repeatedly launched new organizational brands to maintain plausible deniability for Tehran. The IRGC understands that a new name with a new logo offers distance, not necessarily a genuinely new enterprise.
Synagogues, Jewish schools and emergency medical vehicles are targeted less for their strategic value, more for their psychological impact
Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned in early March that if a European country joined the United States and Israel in the current war against the Islamic Republic, it would be a legitimate target for retaliation. The group’s first claimed attack followed days later. The targets make Tehran’s intent unmistakably clear. Synagogues, Jewish schools and emergency medical vehicles are chosen less for their strategic value, more for their psychological impact. This is a signal that Jewish communal life, prayer, education even the act of saving lives, cannot be conducted safely anywhere in Europe. Ashab al-Yamin’s videos, a form of propaganda, are, rather than simple claims of responsibility, distributed across the Axis of Resistance’s media ecosystem with the intention of inspiring further attacks.
Iran wages terrorism to impose costs on governments, on Jewish communities, and on the willingness of democracies to stand with Israel and against the Islamic Republic. Britain is now being made to pay. Belgium has responded by deploying military personnel to guard Jewish sites. Britain must match that seriousness.
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