Prosecutors in Belgium say that when the couple was arrested in Belgium, they were in possession of TAPT – a homemade explosive that is often used by terrorists. They were also in possession of a detonation device.

A few days after this news broke from Belgium, the Netherlands announced that two of its Iranian diplomats were being expelled from the embassy in The Hague
In November last year it was reported that Iranian man Ahwazi Ahmad Mola Nissi, a 52-year-old political activist, was shot dead in the Netherlands. At around the same time, further details about the death of Mohammad-Reza Kolahi were revealed.

Although the Netherlands has not given an official reason for expelling two members of staff at the Iranian embassy, leaks indicate that they had known about the Mola Nissi and Motamed assassinations and had played a role.

The Iranian regime has been involved in assassinations of its political opponents and of dissidents for decades. It is impossible to say how many people have been assassinated outside Iran because of the different weapons and methods used, but there have been many.

Dr. Kazem Rajavi was a renowned human rights advocate and elder brother of Iranian opposition leader Massoud Rajavi and Iran’s first Ambassador to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

On 24 April 1990, was gunned down in broad daylight by several agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran as he was driving to his home in Coppet, a village near Geneva.

Rajavi’s assassination required enormous resources, extensive planning, and coordination among several of the regime’s organizations. After extensive investigations, Roland Chatelain, the Swiss magistrate in charge of the case, and Swiss judicial and police officials confirmed the role of Iran’s government under Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the participation of thirteen official agents of the Iranian regime who had used “service passports” to enter Switzerland for their plot.

Swiss magistrates later issued an international arrest warrant for a former Iranian intelligence minister, Ali Fallahian. Fallahian and 13 Iranian diplomats are wanted on charges of murdering Kazem Rajavi.

In 1991, the last prime minister of Iran under the Shah regime Shapour Bakhtiar was stabbed and killed at his home just outside Paris. He had already survived an assassination attempt in 1980 in France.

Mr Naghdi was a former Iranian diplomat who worked at Tehran’s Rome embassy under the Shah. In 1982, angered by the suppression of dissidents after the revolution, he defected to the opposition People’s Mojahadeen Organization of Iran, PMOI/MEK.

Mr Naghdi was shot on a Rome street in a murder that

Abolghasem Mesbahi, a former Iranian intelligent agent based in Germany, alleged to the police investigation that the agent sent from Tehran to kill Mr Naghdi.and also
the ambassador of Iran called Aboutalebi had been involved in the mission alongside Amir Mansur Assl Bozorgian, the head of Iranian intelligence in Rome.

Sadegh Sharafkandi, a Kurdish political activist and the Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI), was murdered along with a couple of colleagues and a translator in 1992 at Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.

The Iranian regime put a temporary stop to the assassinations in Europe after the backlash from the public over the Mykonos restaurant murders, the trial of which had a huge following. The trial of the two Iranian and four Lebanese perpetrators of the attack lasted five years.

Eventually assassination attempts continued and current Saudi Foreign Minister was targeted in a failed assassination attempt. He was the Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time.

n Iranian – Manssor Arbabsiar – confessed that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the ambassador.

These actions just go to show that Tehran has very little regard for the consequences of its acts. Thankfully, not all of the Iranian regime’s assassinations were successful. A great number of them have been foiled, like the one that was intended to target the opposition in Paris at the end of June. This is something that is starting to be a great concern to many in Europe.