Iran-linked plots abroad

Where things stand

Courts on both sides of the Atlantic have now convicted men in Iran-linked cases: a British court found a Norwegian teenager guilty of conspiracy to murder, and a US jury convicted Hadi Matar over the 2022 stabbing of Salman Rushdie.

This topic follows criminal cases in Western countries in which prosecutors link violence or attempted violence to Iran. In Britain, prosecutors argued that a Swedish organised crime group was being used by Iran and had recruited a Norwegian teenager, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, according to the South China Morning Post and The National. In the United States, Hadi Matar stabbed and partially blinded the author Salman Rushdie in 2022, and evidence at his federal trial showed he had researched the fatwa against Rushdie for more than a year beforehand. The two verdicts sit in the same frame because both courts examined how individuals with no obvious prior profile came to act against targets associated with Tehran's declared enemies. How direct any Iranian involvement was varies from case to case and rests on what prosecutors alleged rather than on admissions from Iran.