EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While most European intelligence services are alert to the terrorist activities of Iran’s IRGC, they pay too little heed to the its propaganda machine, which spreads propaganda across the continent from Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Prague.
On July 13, 1989, Iranian operatives in Vienna under diplomatic cover assassinated the head of an Iranian Kurdish dissident group and two others. As of that moment, most European intelligence services began to monitor the malign activities of the Iranian regime on European soil. They committed resources to uncovering Iranian cells, terrorism, fake refugees, pro-regime lobbies, and phony Iranian activists in the European media.
Iran has continued to be active in Europe for decades. In 2018, authorities in Belgium, France, and Germany arrested several Iranian operatives, including an Iranian government official, on charges of conspiring to plant a bomb in the middle of a political rally in Paris.
While EU intelligence services are alert to the terrorist activities of the IRGC network, they tend to neglect the influence of the IRGC on Persian external media. These media services are based in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Prague, where they broadcast slanted reports in favor of the Iranian regime.
The largest Iranian intelligence center in Europe is in Vienna. European think tanks that are supposedly monitoring the activities of Persian media networks cannot be relied upon, as in some cases they contain regime apologists.
The IRGC is committed to the silencing of both internal and external opposition, and does much to control both Iranian public opinion and Western media perceptions. Pro-regime journalists, part of Iran’s propaganda machine, normalize and legitimize the crimes of the Islamic regime and systematically lie and spread propaganda in the mullahs’ interests.
Read the complete article at: BESA Center
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