Iranian Transnational Assassinations Network Hit by US, UK Sanctions

The United States and Britain have announced coordinated sanctions against 11 individuals for alleged involvement in a network that has “carried out acts of transnational repression, including numerous assassinations and kidnappings,” at the instigation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The criminal network “has targeted foreign dissidents and Iranian regime opponents for assassination at the behest of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS),” which was already under US sanctions, the Department of State said in a statement on January 29.

In a separate statement, the UK Foreign Office said the sanctions are designed “to tackle the domestic threat posed by the Iranian regime, which seeks to export repression, harassment, and coercion against journalists and human rights defenders” in Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

Brian Nelson, US Treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said that the Islamic Republic’s “continued efforts to target dissidents and activists demonstrate the regime’s deep insecurity and attempt to expand Iran’s domestic repression internationally.”

The individuals who are subject to asset freezes include Iranian national Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti, described by the UK statement as “the head of an international criminal and trafficking cartel, who was linked to the 2019 murder of an Iranian dissident in Istanbul.”

Zindashti’s network has carried out “assassinations and kidnappings across multiple jurisdictions in an attempt to silence the Iranian regime’s perceived critics,” the US Treasury Department said, adding that the network “has also plotted operations in the United States.”

Treasury said that in 2021, the network recruited a member of the Hells Angels Outlaw Motorcycle Group, Canadian national Damion Patrick John Ryan, to “assassinate individuals in the United States who fled Iran.”

Ryan also recruited Canadian national and Hells Angels affiliate Adam Richard Pearson “to carry out the murders,” it said. 

The two Canadians are “presently incarcerated abroad on unrelated criminal matters.”

Separately, the US Department of Justice said that Zindashti, Pearson and Ryan were charged with conspiracy to use interstate commerce in the commission of a murder-for-hire plot. 

It said the three conspired with each other in a plot to murder two residents of the state of Maryland who had fled to the United States after one of them defected from Iran.

Also targeted by sanctions were people involved in the assassination of Iranian cybersecurity official turned critic Masud Vardanjani and British-Iranian dissident Saeed Karimian, Treasury said.

Britain also imposed sanctions on “members of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Unit 840, which was exposed in an ITV investigation into plots to assassinate 2 television presenters from news channel Iran International on UK soil,” the UK statement said.

“This plot was just the latest credible reporting of the regime’s attempt to intimidate or kill British nationals or UK-linked individuals, with at least 15 such threats taking place since January 2022,” it added.