Iran’s Hybrid Warfare in Europe: Phillip Smyth on Proxy Militias and Criminal Networks
How is Iran using proxy militias, criminal networks, and decentralized recruits to conduct hybrid warfare across Europe?
Irina Tsukerman interviews Phillip Smyth about Iran’s expanding use of decentralized proxy networks, criminal gangs, online recruits, and ideologically aligned militias to conduct hybrid operations across Europe. Smyth explains how opaque front groups create plausible deniability, complicate attribution, and exploit uneven law-enforcement responses. Their discussion also examines Hezbollah’s weakened command structure, Russian-Iranian operational parallels, risks to Jewish and financial targets, and the policy challenges facing European, American, and Gulf governments today amid escalating regional conflict.
Phillip Smyth is a specialist in Shia militias, Iranian proxy organizations, and Tehran’s external operations. A former Soref Fellow at The Washington Institute, he has conducted fieldwork and open-source research through positions connected with the University of Maryland and Atlantic Council. Smyth created Hizballah Cavalcade and pioneered detailed profiles of Iraqi, Syrian, Bahraini, and other Iran-backed militant groups. He has testified before Congress and briefed multiple branches of the United States government on regional security.
What happens when Iran decides it no longer needs a neatly branded proxy army, because a teenager with Telegram, a criminal connection, and a few hundred dollars may be cheaper, harder to trace, and perfectly expendable?
In the latest Washington Outsider Report, Philip Smith and I dig into Iran’s emerging hybrid warfare networks in Europe, where Iraqi Shia militia infrastructure, criminal gangs, ideological recruits, online cutouts, and disposable freelancers can be mixed and matched for sabotage, intimidation, arson, terrorism, and information operations. We examine why this deliberately messy model gives the IRGC plausible deniability, complicates attribution, and allows Tehran to pressure European governments without exposing its most valuable operatives. We also discuss Hezbollah’s diminished operational role, Iran’s increasing reliance on Iraqi militia networks and Russian-style outsourcing, Europe’s uneven response to attacks on Jewish and other targets, and the danger of treating apparently isolated incidents as ordinary crime rather than pieces of a much larger campaign. The uncomfortable conclusion is that Europe may not be facing an “underground army” in the traditional sense at all. It may be facing something more troublesome: a marketplace for hybrid warfare in which the people carrying out an attack do not necessarily know who ultimately hired them, while Tehran retains the option to scale from cheap harassment to something considerably uglier.
No responses yet