Iran ‘mapping’ Jews in diaspora for kill squads

Iran has been “mapping” the Jewish diaspora for an assassination campaign that will be triggered if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities, a Jewish woman who met Ayatollah Khamenei has told the JC.

The chilling plan, disclosed at a high-level meeting in Tehran, involved identifying key Jewish figures and determining “how to strike and where”.

The hit squads would be deployed if Israel ever attacked Iran, she was told, so “the diaspora would have a very nasty surprise”.

The revenge plot was revealed to Catherine Perez-Shakdam, one of the few Westerners to be granted an audience with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Catherine Perez Shakdam (John Nguyen)

Khamenei only seemed scared of one thing  — an Israeli attack, she said, adding: “He believes Netanyahu’s threats and he knows that, for now, Israel is militarily superior. ”

She also met Qasem Soleimani, the terrorist mastermind killed in a US attack three years ago, and Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s hardline president.

Unbeknown to the despotic regime, Ms Perez-Shakdam, a Middle East analyst and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society think tank who contributed to pro-Iranian websites and the Russian propaganda TV channel, RT, was also a Jew.

She said she gained the high-level access via the man she called “Iran’s Dr Goebbels”, the late-Nader Talebzadeh, who led propaganda campaigns and cultivated her as a friend and ally.

It was at a closed event he organised in Iran that she said was told of the plan “to identify all the prominent NGOs run by Jews, who was doing what in each business sector, the important rabbis. They wanted to figure out their influence and where they lived with their families in order to target them.” Talebzadeh, she said, was explicit that the mapping was preparation for murder to make “the diaspora pay a price”.

In November MI5’s director general Ken McCallum said ten Iranian assassination plots had been foiled in the UK in the space of a year, although he did not say whether Jews had been targeted.

The revelations will increase the pressure on the government to follow the US and proscribe the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.

A spokesperson for the Community Security Trust said: “We have known for many years that Iran is involved in plotting terrorism against Jewish communities, but it is utterly chilling to have it spelled out in such clear detail. When people ask why Jewish schools and synagogues need security, this is a large part of the answer.”