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The Backstory behind the Killing of Qods Force Col. Khodaei

(TRENDS Research & Advisory-Abu Dhabi) Dr. Matthew Levitt - On May 22, gunmen killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei outside his home in Tehran. Khodaei was reportedly the deputy commander of Qods Force Unit 840, responsible for planning external Iranian operations such as kidnappings, abductions, and assassinations. While Iran has carried out such operations for over four decades, they have become more frequent and aggressive in recent years. After the July 2018 plot to bomb a National Council of Resistance of Iran rally in Paris, I started collecting data on Iran's external assassination, surveillance, and abduction plots. My research assistants and I found 98 cases of Iranian external operations from December 1979 through December 2021. At least 26 well-documented plots have taken place in the three years following the Paris plot: in Colombia, Cyprus, Denmark, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, and the U.S. So long as Iran continues to pursue external operations such as assassinations and kidnappings, the countries targeted by such operations will act to thwart them. The writer is director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2022-06-23 00:00:00
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