When arsonists torched four ambulances belonging to the Jewish emergency service Hatzola in London’s Golders Green on March 23, 2026, the initial reaction from the British authorities followed a painfully familiar script: caution, bureaucratic hand-wringing, and a desperate hope that the attack was an isolated hate crime. A front group calling itself the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right claimed responsibility, but British security agencies, allergic to escalation, hesitated.

Subsequent intelligence exposed the naivety of that timidity. By July, 2026, London finally grew a spine, sanctioning the organization after concluding what should have been obvious from day one: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force “almost certainly” directed the cell. Granted, Tehran does not deploy its own uniformed operatives to commit daylight terrorism in Western capitals. Instead, it hires local thugs, deploys criminal proxies, and counts on Western bureaucratic inertia to escape accountability.

Europe is only now waking up to a strategy that the Islamic Republic has spent decades perfecting in America’s backyard. Tehran understands that it does not need conventional military bases to project power. Give the IRGC diplomatic immunity, fraudulent passports, lax airport security, and a few well-placed, corrupt local officials, and it has all the infrastructure it needs to finance terror, surveil Western targets, and move operatives with impunity.

The capture of Nicolás Maduro in January 2026 should have been a death blow to Iran’s most permissive sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, Washington is on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The State Department is making its classic,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)