When Iran vowed to avenge the 2020 killing of General Qassim Suleimani, many in Washington feared an army of shadowy operatives would strike on U.S. soil. But behind the curtain, Iran’s plans looked less like a spy thriller and more like a true-crime caper gone wrong, a New York Times report reveals. Instead of deploying skilled agents, Iranian military officials have repeatedly outsourced their revenge missions to a haphazard collection of criminals, biker gang members, cartel hitmen, and old prison buddies — sometimes with shockingly amateurish results. A dramatic illustration emerged during the 2024 presidential campaign, when Iran set its sights on assassinating Donald Trump. Prosecutors say the job landed in the lap of Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan man living in Tehran. Rather than training a covert squad, Shakeri turned to two men he’d met in a U.S. prison more than ten years earlier: a Brooklyn pipefitter known as “Pop” Rivera and his friend Jonathon Loadholt of Staten Island. The FBI intercepted the plan before anyone could act. The pattern isn’t new. A decade of federal indictments shows Iran again and again turning to underworld freelancers. One plot recruited Russian mobsters to kill a dissident journalist in New York; another used a Hells Angel in Canada to target an Iranian defector in Maryland. Back in 2011, an Iranian American in Texas offered a Mexican drug cartel $1.5 million to bomb a Washington, D.C. restaurant in hopes of assassinating the Saudi ambassador. “Tehran wants the results, but not the fingerprints,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism scholar at Georgetown University. By using outsiders, Iran tries to avoid direct blame, but risks losing control over the mission. At the same time, U.S. security agencies have kept up warnings about sleeper cells that could be waiting in place for orders. After the recent airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program, border and intelligence officials warned of fresh infiltration risks. Customs and Border Protection reported that roughly 1,700 Iranians were apprehended crossing the southern border between 2021 and 2024. Officials acknowledged many could be dissidents fleeing the regime, but also flagged the possibility that some might support Tehran. Within days of the new airstrikes, Homeland Security announced the arrests of nearly a dozen Iranians living in the country illegally, including a man previously identified as a suspected terrorist and another with known Hezbollah ties. Civil liberties advocates have challenged the government’s narrative, cautioning against painting all Iranian migrants as potential terrorists. The lesson seems to be that Iran’s ability to strike inside America may be more fragile than advertised. Years of botched plots and reliance on random criminals suggest the Islamic Republic lacks a professional network ready to act. Yet the threat hasn’t disappeared. Iran continues to nurture grudges against Trump and other senior U.S. figures, including John Bolton, who was also targeted in a similar scheme involving criminals. Experts believe Tehran will keep searching for ways to settle its scores — even if it means rolling the dice on the underworld again. “They still want payback,” Hoffman said. “And they’re willing to wait.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)