Mike Pompeo’s claim that the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is carrying out “assassination operations in the heart of Europe” has bewildered security experts and Iranian exiles, who say they are not aware of any evidence for the allegation.
The new US secretary of state referred to the alleged assassinations in his first major speech on Monday, but devoted just a single line to it amid a litany of criticisms of Iranian behaviour, giving no further details.
“Today, the Iranian Quds Force conducts covert assassination operations in the heart of Europe,” Pompeo said, referring to the external operations arm of the Islamic revolutionary guards corps (IRGC).
When asked for clarification, the state department said it would look into the matter, but provided no further information. US diplomats specialising in Iran were taken by surprise by Pompeo’s allegations.
There have been no recent killings in Europe officially attributed to the Iranian state. Iran’s last prime minister under the Shah, Shapour Bakhtiar, was assassinated in France in 1991, and four Iranian Kurdish dissidents were gunned down in a Greek restaurant called Mykonos in Berlin the following year.
The court in the Mykonos case issued an international arrest warrant in 1997 for Iran’s then intelligence minister, Hojjat al-Islam Ali Fallahian, but Tehran denied involvement.
The 2012 bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, was blamed by the Bulgarian government on the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, widely viewed as a Iranian client force.
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