European countries have stepped up their domestic security efforts over rising fears that Iran will try to orchestrate terror attacks on their soil, as the US-Israel war against the Islamic Republic continues to rage in the Middle East.
The Iranian regime has repeatedly orchestrated terror attacks around the world. Since the start of the war on February 28, three Iran-linked attacks have already rocked the United States and Europe.
In Norway, three Norwegian brothers of Iraqi origin were arrested on suspicion of carrying out a “terrorist bombing” after an explosion at the US embassy in Oslo caused minor damage.
Police said they were exploring the possibility that the suspects were following “an order from a government entity.” Iran’s ambassador in Oslo denied the regime had any involvement.
A video appearing to show Iran’s assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes in Iran — was uploaded to the Google Maps page for the US embassy after the bombing.
In Belgium, a pre-dawn blast on Monday damaged a synagogue in the country’s eastern city of Liege, causing no injuries. On Thursday, Belgian authorities said they were looking into a video claiming responsibility for the attack circulated within the Shia “militant online community.”
In the United States, shortly after the war broke out, a US citizen of Senegalese origin opened fire on civilians at a bar in Austin, Texas, killing two people.
The March 1 shooting left 14 others wounded, including three who were critically injured, before officers killed the shooter, identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, police said.
The Austin Police Department and the FBI investigate a shooting at Buford’s on 6th Street, March 1, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Jack Myer)
He was wearing a sweatshirt that said “Property of Allah,” and another shirt with an Iranian flag design, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
Diagne had expressed “pro-Iranian regime sentiment” on social media, the SITE Intelligence Group said.
Criminal networks
Several European intelligence agencies have accused Iran of running a network of agents and criminals to carry out covert operations.
In its annual threat assessment, Norwegian security service PST said in February that Iran — which it considers one of the main threats to the country — could rely on “proxy actors,” including “criminal networks,” to commit acts.
Austrian intelligence service DSN wrote in a 2024 report that “criminal networks have increasingly replaced Iranian services in carrying out violent attacks abroad,” and that it should be assumed “that this new strategy will intensify.”
Thomas Renard, head of the International Center for Counter-Terrorism, said reaching out to these criminal networks would be the easiest option for Tehran. But Iran could also activate European circles linked to the Hamas or Hezbollah terror groups.
“Iran is the main sponsor of these organizations — even though their objectives may differ from those of Tehran,” Renard said.
“Less likely — but very serious — would be the activation of Iranian agents who have infiltrated Europe,” he added, though “burning your agents is generally a last resort.”
Finally, Iran could encourage an individual to carry out an attack, similar to the “lone wolf” terror attacks linked to ISIS that have been seen in Europe in recent years.
“Isolated individuals could take action, because they are in a cycle of heavy consumption of propaganda, combined with an intense media cycle that would draw a great deal of attention to any potential attack,” he said.
Iran has also sought to extend its reach in Israel in recent years, by way of efforts to build a network of homegrown spies, recruited to gather intelligence on sensitive sites and high-ranking officials in exchange for money.
Illustrative: Prison guards operate in a special wing of the Damon Prison established for Israelis accused of spying for Iran, in the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel, northern Israel, July 1, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
In a select few cases, Iranian agents who made contact with Israelis allegedly attempted to rope them into assassination attempts. Such was the case with two young men from Tiberias, 18-year-old Yoni Segal and 20-year-old Omri Mizrahi, who were arrested in June last year.
Extension of foreign policy
US researcher Matthew Levitt says Iran has carried out plots abroad targeting dissidents, journalists, foreign officials and others since just months after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Iran sees terrorism as an extension of foreign policy — an asymmetric means of reaching its adversaries beyond its borders despite their military superiority,” the expert at the Washington Institute wrote in August.
Most recently, in June 2024, an assassination attempt was carried out in the Netherlands’ Haarlem on an Iranian citizen, according to Dutch intelligence agency AIVD.
One of the suspects was also suspected of a failed assassination attempt on Spanish politician and Iran critic Alejo Vidal-Quadras.
“It is likely that Iran is responsible for the two assassination attempts,” the intelligence agency wrote in a 2024 report.
Protesters march along a street during a demonstration to support mass protests in Iran against the regime there, in Paris on January 11, 2026. (Kiran RIDLEY / AFP)
A Belgian court in 2021 jailed an Iranian diplomat for 20 years after convicting him of plotting the thwarted bombing of an Iranian anti-regime rally outside Paris.
The man was attached to the Iranian mission in Austria when he supplied explosives for an attack that was planned to target a rally of the exiled National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in 2018.
