From the quiet suburbs of Maryland to the war-torn streets of Gaza, a dangerous pattern is emerging — one that too many in the West still fail to recognize. Iran, through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, is not just building missiles or sponsoring rogue regimes. It is actively exporting violence into the heart of the free world. Whether by hiring contract killers to silence dissidents on U.S. soil or by arming terror proxies like Hamas, Tehran has launched a campaign of hybrid warfare that blurs the lines between crime, terrorism, and statecraft.
And while much of the democratic world hesitates — caught between diplomacy, media optics, and political fear — only one nation stands firmly in the way: Israel.
A Silent War Most Americans Don’t See | Hybrid Warfare
In the summer of 2024, police in the Dutch city of Haarlem arrested two men outside the home of an Iranian dissident. They were armed, on the phone with a third party, and — according to Dutch intelligence — moments away from carrying out a political assassination. Weapons, ammunition, and phones were seized. This was no random crime. It was a state-backed hit job with connections to an earlier assassination attempt in Spain — and it led directly to the Iranian regime.
A few months earlier — in the United States — federal prosecutors charged three men, including a Hells Angels–linked gang member, in a murder-for-hire plot targeting an Iranian-American dissident in Maryland. The man had been under FBI protection for over a year due to prior threats. The plot? Orchestrated by agents of the Iranian regime.
These aren’t movie scripts. They are real plots, exposed just in time — and they weren’t carried out by rogue agents or freelancers. They were part of a coordinated campaign ordered by the Islamic Republic of Iran, carried out through criminal proxies in Western democracies.
Iran is not just threatening Israel or causing “regional instability.”
It is actively exporting violence into the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and beyond — and it’s working.
While American media focuses on ceasefires and negotiations, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is building an invisible war network — assassins, spies, and digital influence operations — to silence critics, destabilize the West, and advance authoritarian control. Hybrid Warfare.
And while the West debates optics and diplomacy, only one country is confronting this hybrid warfare threat head-on: Israel.
Despite relentless criticism in global media, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East actively confronting Iran’s terror empire — not only defending its borders, but defending the very values Iran is working to destroy:
- Freedom of speech
- Religious tolerance
- Women’s rights
- LGBTQ+ protections
- The rule of law
This is not just about national security. It’s about the survival of democratic systems — and the frontline is closer than we think.
The Regime Behind the Curtain: What the IRGC Really Is
To understand Iran’s hybrid warfare on the West, you have to understand the institution at the center of it: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — an entity unlike any conventional military in the modern world.
But to truly grasp what the IRGC is, we need to go back to pre-revolutionary Iran.
Before 1979: Iran’s Last Liberal Window
Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — a secular monarch who maintained close ties with the United States and Europe. Though far from perfect, Iran under the Shah was relatively pro-Western, with modernizing reforms, a strong middle class, and religious tolerance that made it unique in the Muslim world.
That era came to a violent end in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led a theocratic revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran — a regime built not on democracy, but on clerical rule, ideological supremacy, and the suppression of dissent.
And from the ashes of that upheaval, the IRGC was born.
The Rise of the IRGC: From Guardian to Global Menace
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was created by Khomeini in 1979 with a singular mission:
To protect the Islamic regime from enemies, foreign and domestic.
But over time, the IRGC grew into something far more dangerous:
- It became a parallel military with its own chain of command, separate from Iran’s traditional army.
- It took control of Iran’s intelligence apparatus, launching surveillance and suppression operations against students, journalists, feminists, and dissidents.
- It expanded into cyberwarfare, developing capabilities to hack foreign governments, manipulate public opinion online, and surveil diaspora communities.
- It established the Quds Force, a covert unit dedicated to foreign operations — from bankrolling Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to orchestrating assassinations in Europe and America.
- It became an economic empire, running construction firms, oil conglomerates, telecom companies, and smuggling networks.
Today, the IRGC is not just a military entity. It is a hybrid empire — combining ideology, military force, intelligence, and business under one command. It is also the command center for Iran’s hybrid warfare strategy — projecting power abroad without deploying armies.
Terrorism With a Government Budget
The IRGC doesn’t just act like a terror network — it funds, trains, and directs many of the world’s most dangerous ones.
That’s why:
- The United States designated the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019 — the first time it had applied that label to a part of another country’s military.
- Canada has similarly sanctioned the IRGC under anti-terror laws.
- However, the European Union and United Nations have not, despite mounting evidence of IRGC involvement in:
- Assassination plots in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.S.
- Weapons shipments to terrorist groups
- Cyber and disinformation campaigns
This failure to act has left gaps in global sanctions, law enforcement, and diplomacy, allowing the IRGC to operate in European capitals with diplomatic cover, business access, and legal loopholes.
Iran’s Global Playbook: Hybrid Warfare by Design
Iran’s regime doesn’t operate like most adversaries. It doesn’t need tanks on borders or bombers overhead. Instead, it plays a different kind of war — one that’s silent, scattered, and systemic. Experts call it hybrid warfare: a blend of assassination, misinformation, organized crime, cyber attacks, proxy terror, and diplomacy — all happening simultaneously, all with a single goal: to destabilize enemies and silence dissent while preserving plausible deniability.
The tactics are diverse — the target is always the same: freedom.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Force operate under this doctrine. They recruit cyber warriors, sponsor militias, infiltrate diaspora communities, and — increasingly — outsource political violence to local criminals in Western countries. The result? Iran can operate globally without getting its hands dirty. This is the essence of Iran’s hybrid warfare — silent, scattered, deniable, and devastatingly effective.
Let’s look at just three recent examples:
Iran’s “Genius”: Exploiting the Free World’s Weak Spots
Iran doesn’t have to sneak across borders or build secret bases. It exploits the very systems that make Western democracies strong:
- Open borders → Easy movement for operatives and weapons
- Liberal asylum laws → Infiltration of dissident communities
- Digital platforms → Surveillance, disinformation, psychological warfare
- Banking freedom → Crypto and front companies to move money undetected
- Speech protections → Propaganda operations run from media-friendly jurisdictions
The Criminal Connection: Iran’s New Strategy
Iran used to send its own spies — now it hires locals
Iran’s strategy for silencing dissent and projecting power abroad has evolved significantly. Historically reliant on its own operatives, the Iranian regime now increasingly outsources operations to local criminal organizations in target countries. This shift offers several advantages:
- Cost Efficiency: Hiring local criminals is often more economical than deploying trained operatives from Iran.
- Plausible Deniability: Utilizing third-party actors allows Iran to distance itself from illicit activities, complicating attribution.
- Operational Reach: Leveraging existing criminal networks grants access to local knowledge and resources, enhancing the effectiveness of operations.
This approach poses significant challenges for law enforcement agencies worldwide, as the involvement of local criminals obscures the connection to the Iranian state, hindering investigations and prosecutions.
Case Studies Illustrating Iran's Outsourcing Strategy
These examples underscore Iran’s adeptness at exploiting Western freedoms—such as open borders, free speech, and financial systems—to conduct operations that are difficult to trace back to the regime.
Propaganda is Hybrid Warfare: Controlling the Narrative
Iran has developed a sophisticated strategy to manipulate global perceptions, particularly concerning its adversarial stance toward Israel and support for groups like Hamas. By funding and orchestrating digital influence operations, Iran seeks to control narratives, disseminate disinformation, and erode international support for Israel.
Tactics Employed
Impact on Public Opinion
These coordinated disinformation campaigns have tangible effects:
- Erosion of Support for Israel: By flooding social media and other platforms with anti-Israel content, Iran aims to diminish international backing for Israel, portraying it as the aggressor and undermining its legitimacy.
- Amplification of Anti-Semitic Sentiments: The spread of false narratives and biased information contributes to the rise of anti-Semitic attitudes globally, as misinformation fuels misunderstandings and prejudices.
- Polarization of Societies: Disinformation campaigns exacerbate divisions within societies, influencing public discourse and policy debates related to the Middle East conflict.
Disinformation and Narrative Control
Iran’s investment in propaganda warfare represents a strategic effort to manipulate global narratives, particularly concerning its conflicts with Israel and support for proxy groups like Hamas. Recognizing and countering these disinformation tactics is essential for maintaining informed and balanced international discourse.
The Open Front: Iran’s Proxy Armies and the Assault on Israel
While Iran’s campaign to silence critics often plays out in hidden plots and covert assassinations, it also operates in the open — through armed proxy groups that wage war against Israel from multiple fronts. This network is Iran’s most visible—and arguably most dangerous—extension of its goal to reshape the region under its ideological and strategic control.
- Cost Efficiency: Hiring local criminals is often more economical than deploying trained operatives from Iran.
- Plausible Deniability: Utilizing third-party actors allows Iran to distance itself from illicit activities, complicating attribution.
- Operational Reach: Leveraging existing criminal networks grants access to local knowledge and resources, enhancing the effectiveness of operations.
Key Iranian Proxy Groups Targeting Israel
This approach poses significant challenges for law enforcement agencies worldwide, as the involvement of local criminals obscures the connection to the Iranian state, hindering investigations and prosecutions.
April 2024: Iran's Direct Attack on Israel
On April 13, 2024, Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles directly at Israel, marking the first time the Islamic Republic openly attacked Israeli territory. The assault followed an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed top IRGC officials. While most of the projectiles were intercepted, the symbolic message was clear: Iran is no longer hiding behind proxies—it is willing to strike openly.
Recent Developments
Conclusion: Not “Resistance” — Iranian Orchestration
These aren’t disconnected movements fighting for their own causes. They are strategically linked militias and terrorist groups armed, trained, and in many cases directed by the Iranian regime. Their unified goal: to destabilize Israel, disrupt Western alliances, and assert Iran as the dominant power in the region.
Calling them “Palestinian resistance” or “independent actors” misses the larger truth. They are the front lines of Iran’s hybrid warfare— and their battlefield stretches from the Israeli-Gaza border to European streets and U.S. cities.
Why Israel Is the Firewall
At the heart of the Middle East lies a state that is not only under relentless attack from Iranian-backed proxies, but also uniquely positioned as the only effective check on Iran’s regional terror network: Israel.
Amid diplomatic hesitation and strategic caution from the international community, Israel stands almost alone in its willingness to confront Iran’s military proxies — and, when necessary, Iran itself.
Israel is:
- The only liberal democracy in the region. Israel holds regular free elections, upholds an independent judiciary, and protects minority rights — in stark contrast to the authoritarian regimes that surround it.
- The only military power actively disrupting Iran’s terror web. Through targeted strikes on IRGC leadership, weapons convoys, and proxy group infrastructure, Israel has consistently undermined Iran’s ability to operate freely in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and beyond.
- The only state confronting Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC with force. Where other nations sanction or condemn from a distance, Israel takes direct action — absorbing the risks, the consequences, and the global backlash.
What Israel is defending isn’t just its borders — it’s the values the West claims to stand for
The Bigger Picture: This Hybrid Warfare Isn’t Just About Territory
The conflict isn’t merely about disputed land or border security. It’s about which vision of the future will survive in the Middle East:
- A democratic society where speech, belief, identity, and dissent are protected or
- A network of authoritarian theocracies where terror, censorship, and repression are state policy
As Iran builds alliances with China, Russia, and extremist militias across the region, Israel becomes not just a target, but the firewall — the frontline state where these global threats are being held back.
Why the West Is Vulnerable — and Complicit
Despite years of documented Iranian aggression — assassinations, terror plots, disinformation, and missile strikes — the West has consistently failed to respond with coordinated force. This isn’t just a policy shortcoming. It’s a systemic vulnerability, spread across legal, political, and narrative domains. Worse, it’s a weakness Iran understands — and exploits with precision.
Legal Gaps: The System Stops at the Trigger Finger
Iran’s transnational repression campaigns have left a trail of arrests and court cases — but rarely justice.
- In the U.S., Canada, and Europe, law enforcement catches the hitmen, but not the masterminds. Why? Because the legal systems in democratic societies are built to prosecute individuals, not state-sponsored terror coordinated by foreign intelligence services.
- Intelligence often can’t be used in court. Surveillance may reveal connections to the IRGC or Iranian leadership, but if the evidence is classified, inadmissible, or gathered without a warrant in the relevant jurisdiction, it doesn’t make it to trial.
- No clear legal framework exists in most countries for prosecuting state-directed assassination plots as acts of war or terror — unless a group is already designated a terrorist entity.
This creates a two-tiered justice system: one for criminals, and one where sovereign regimes get a pass.
Political Gaps: The IRGC Slips Through the Diplomatic Cracks
The European Union has still not designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, despite its well-documented involvement in foreign assassinations, funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, and regional warfare.
EU officials cite legal constraints, including the need for a national court decision to trigger an EU-level terror designation. Meanwhile, the IRGC operates openly via front groups and diplomatic channels across Europe.
Some U.S. allies are softening toward Iran diplomatically, driven by trade interests, nuclear negotiations, or energy concerns. This weakens collective leverage and gives Iran diplomatic breathing room — even while it plots killings on European soil and ships weapons to Gaza.
Iran doesn’t need every country to stand down. It just needs a few to hesitate.
Narrative Gaps: Winning the War of Perception
Iran has adeptly employed weaponized storytelling to influence perceptions and advance its geopolitical objectives. By leveraging a combination of cyber operations and influence campaigns, Iran seeks to manipulate narratives, particularly in the context of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The Cost of Inaction
By failing to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group, tolerating Iranian influence operations on social media, and treating state-sponsored violence as common crime, the West has created an ecosystem Iran can operate within — and thrive in.
The price is paid by dissidents in exile. By Jewish communities abroad. Western values are under siege. And by Israel, the only country actively resisting this network with force.
What the U.S. Must Do — Now
The threat Iran poses is not theoretical. It is operational, transnational, and already inside the borders of Western democracies. And yet, the current international system treats acts of state-sponsored terrorism like isolated criminal events — rather than what they really are: coordinated political warfare.
Here’s what must change — urgently:
1. Designate the IRGC as a Terrorist Organization — Globally
- Assassination plots in Europe and North America
- Funding and arming terror groups (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis)
- Cyber operations and disinformation campaigns
2. Expand Intelligence Cooperation on Transnational Repression
- Western intelligence agencies must work beyond borders to map, monitor, and neutralize Iranian hit squads, proxies, and financial channels.
- This includes joint surveillance, open-source intelligence sharing, cyber defense, and tracking of diaspora threats.
Fund Digital Counter-Propaganda and Truth Campaigns
- Iran’s influence operations are cheap, effective, and ongoing. The West cannot win this war without competing in the information space.
- Launching and funding truth-based counter-messaging campaigns, bot detection tools, and digital education across platforms is vital.
- This must also include rapid-response information task forces to expose state-driven lies in real time, especially during armed conflict.
4. Back Israel — Not Just as an Ally, But as a Firewall
- Public diplomatic support
- Intelligence sharing and defensive coordination
- Pushback against international isolation driven by Iran’s narrative warfare
5. Reform the Global Justice System to Go After the Architects, Not Just the Assassins
- Contract killings abroad
- State-sponsored disinformation campaigns
- Systemic terrorism by proxy
- Regimes that use proxies for political violence
- Ministries, intelligence agencies, and military branches like the IRGC
- Financial and logistical enablers of cross-border political assassinations
Conclusion: This War Is Already Inside Our Walls
Iran doesn’t need to invade Western nations with tanks or warplanes — it already has. It’s inside our cities, embedded in criminal networks. It’s inside our systems, exploiting legal and political loopholes. And it’s inside our feeds, flooding our platforms with propaganda designed to divide, disinform, and demoralize.
We’ve treated Iran as a distant regional problem. But it isn’t. It’s a global actor with a global strategy, and the battleground is everywhere — from Gaza to New York, from Madrid to Toronto, from online forums to university protests.
And while much of the free world is stuck in deliberation, diplomacy, or denial, only one country is actively holding the line: Israel.
Israel isn’t perfect — no country is. But it is the only democracy in the Middle East that is fighting Iran’s hybrid warfare in the open: with its soldiers, its citizens, its intelligence agencies, and its reputation under constant assault.
This is not just Israel’s war. It is a global battle against authoritarian hybrid warfare — a war on democracy, truth, and sovereignty itself.
“We criticize Israel for fighting back. But one day, we may wonder why we didn’t fight beside it.”
