Iran ‘hiring children to attack Israeli targets in Europe’

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 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 that 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 did not respond to a request for comment.

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 tension between communities divided over immigration.

Both Swedish and Norwegian security services have 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 like Telegram, TikTok or Whatsapp, according to Peter Nesser, a terrorism researcher at Norway’s defence research institute.

Prices start from about €1,500 ($1,560) for a murder, Nesser says. A petrol bomb attack can cost as little as €120, according to one person who has tracked the illicit trade.

“If that’s the case, the execution will probably have the signs of an amateur,” says Nesser. 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 has defined Iran’s regional policy for almost half a century hasn’t lessened the threat of Iranian-backed attacks in Europe, according to 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 simply driven 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, according to police reports. 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 Oct 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 said they believe the man was also recruited by Iran.

The 16-year-old who attacked Elbit Systems in May used two vacuum flasks packed with explosives to try to attack the Israeli defence company and was charged alongside a 23-year-old accomplice.

While the investigation was unable to uncover who gave them instructions or transferred money to the pair, the prosecutor in the case said it seems clear they were acting on behalf of someone else.

Crime gangs

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

Over 1.5 million people have moved to the country since 1980 and now around 20% of the population were born outside of the country. But many struggle to assimilate.

In a recent survey, 40% 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 like Iran.

Now there are concerns in Norway that those problems are spreading across the 1,600-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 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 made youth crime a priority, 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.

In a small, wealthy country like Norway, the prospect of further attacks that could play into the hands of the far-right in the lead up to September’s vote is making some officials nervous.

The blows to Iran could lead the regime “to retreat and focus on rebuilding themselves at home”, says Nesser, the terrorism researcher. “But they might also try to create more havoc.”