The Iranian government has begun outsourcing assassinations and violent attacks against exiled dissidents to criminal groups as Western security services become more vigilant.

Iran has drastically increased its foreign espionage operations in recent years, especially after a series of violent protests over the death of a woman under the custody of the morality police in 2022. As Western security forces have increased scrutiny against such operations, Tehran has started turning to the Hells Angels and other criminal groups to do its work for them, according to senior officials in more than a dozen countries, hundreds of pages of criminal court records, and additional investigative documents obtained by the Washington Post.