A post-Soviet mafia wreaked havoc for Iran. Who will be its next client?

Lower Manhattan, where a court in the United States Southern District of New York convicted two Eastern European mobsters of plotting to kill a dissident on behalf of Iran. Photo: Shutterstock

In March, a Manhattan jury convicted two mobsters – one Georgian and one Azerbaijani-Russian – for attempting to murder an Iranian activist and American citizen in New York. A third member, the triggerman, was arrested in July 2022 near the would-be victim’s doorstep with an AK-47 assault rifle and testified as a government witness. Two months later, the United Kingdom arrested four Iranian nationals, for the first time, for targeting regime opponents in the UK. Iran has shown the clearest pattern of state operatives hiring local criminals for overseas assassinations. But the nexus of crime and resurgent hybrid war also concerns other adversaries of the West – Russia, China and North Korea. It even involves strategic partners like India, leading some security scholars to predict a “fifth wave” of global organized crime.

The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Knightsbridge, London. The British Foreign Office summoned the Iranian ambassador after the UK government arrested four, and charged three, Iranians for National Security Act violations. Photo: wikimedia.org

Spanning Iran, the Caucasus, Central Europe and the United States, the Manhattan murder-for-hire case is unique in revealing two trends: how states use irregularly arrived organized criminals in the West, and the enduring relevance of Soviet-style organized crime in great power competition.

The subversive threat

According to the US charges, the plot originated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, a state security agency on the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list since 2019. An IRGC-IO general hired Rafat Amirov, an Azerbaijani and Russian citizen in Iran and a Russian mafia group member, to the sum of 500,000 US dollars. Their job was to kill Masih Alinejad, a New York-based Iranian-American journalist. Khalid Mehdiyev, who arrived with false documents in the United States, illegally bought an AK-47 to complete the job. In the UK case, three defendants also arrived by irregular means. The attempted murder-for-hire followed previous attempts by “Iranian intelligence officials and assets” to kidnap the journalist for rendition.

The outcome exemplifies the tradeoffs of outsourcing state violence to transnational criminals.

First, it enables political subversion for states with reduced operating capacities in the target country. Pariahs like Iran and North Korea have a minimal diplomatic presence in the West. In the United States, they lack embassies and consulates to provide cover and immunity from prosecution for intelligence officers. Russia has been similarly hamstrung following a wave of diplomatic expulsions in 2018, which followed the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal by Russian GRU military intelligence operatives in Salisbury, and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The pattern in point is the string of arson attacks in Poland, Lithuania and the United Kingdom in 2024 by Ukrainian, Romanian and other non-Russian citizens who, according to European intelligence agencies, were hired by Moscow. Since 2024, Poland has shuttered two Russian consulates, while Czechia and France publicly attributed previous sabotage attempts to the Kremlin’s GRU military intelligence agency.

The director of Britain’s domestic security agency, MI5, has warned of Russia’s mission to “generate mayhem on British and European streets”. On May 7th, the head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Richard Horne said that Moscow is “waging acts of sabotage, often using criminal proxies in their plots”. Both leaders are surely investigating Russian links after the Crown Prosecution Service charged two Ukrainians and one Romanian national in connection to arson attacks targeted at Prime Minister Keir Starmer. These actions still have unexplained motives. While there is no public evidence that Russia’s sabotage and assassination campaign has successfully reached North America yet, Iran’s clearly has, showing an enduring threat.

Another advantage of recruiting criminals is low cost, which has been presented in detail in Tehran’s case thanks to US prosecutors. Iran spent only 30,000 US dollars on an advance payment to assassinate Alinejad. At the same time, Mehdiyev testified that success would result in a bounty of 160,000 US dollars. This is likely much cheaper than Iran organizing its own logistics, with western security services highly vigilant when it comes to the Iranian threat. Additionally, no Iranians were at risk of arrest. Diplomatic blowback was also rather quiet overall. Several levels of outsourcing helped obscure Iran’s role – Mehdiyev was even told that the operation was Baku’s “gift” to Iran. Even a figment of deniability can prevent western governments from retaliating for subversive acts.

Compared to state operators, criminals also have disadvantages, starting with poor professionalism. One mafia enforcer in New York proposed burning down Alinejad’s house instead of killing her. And Mehdiyev, despite having around a decade’s experience in violent crime, likely had no surveillance or covert action training on par with Russian or Iranian intelligence. His attorney argued that he wanted to “scam” the Iranians without killing Alinejad. The defendants ultimately helped the authorities by taking convenient selfies with their mob tattoos.

Rafat Amirov, an Azerbaijani-Russian citizen and resident of Iran, with his birthday cake. The eight-pointed stars symbolize his status as a “vor v zakone” (thief in law). Screenshot from US Department of Justice, United States of America v. Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev indictment. 

The Soviet connection

The Russian crime group, identified as the “Thieves-in-Law” (Vory v Zakone) in court documents, passed instructions through Polad Omarov, a Georgian citizen extradited from Czechia, down to Mehdiyev, who joined the group as a teenager in Azerbaijan before illegally entering the US. The hitman claimed to follow orders from a vor or oğru (thief in Russian and Azeri, respectively) leader in an Azerbaijani prison. He also noted that they adhered to the correct criminal lifestyle, which involves never cooperating with governments.

Polad Omarov, a Georgian citizen who resided in Slovenia and Czechia and passed Iranian targeting information from Rafat Amirov to the hitman and sports a vor v zakone tattoo. Screenshot from US Department of Justice, United States of America v. Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev indictment.

These traditions show the surprising continuity of Soviet criminal culture and operating methods. The term vory v zakone originates in the Soviet Union’s gulag system. The superpower’s collapse in 1991, amid liberalized capital and border controls around the world, was “the single most important event” for the expansion of globalized crime in the next two decades. The British journalist Misha Glenny gives an effective world tour of these developments in his 2008 book. The American security scholar Phil Williams described the Soviet collapse, globalization and neoliberalism as triggers for the “third wave” of organized crime – the first originated in “hotspots” like Sicily, and the second went global with narcotics after the Second World War. Mark Galeotti described this new shift in the 2000s through discussion of the legendary, tattooed vory, who transformed into “hybrid gangster-businessmen” with little concern for traditions. Evidently, the vory are still relevant. Eurasian crime groups (calling them Russian is too narrow) have become intertwined with waves of diaspora emigration after the Soviet collapse and established functional outposts in key entryways like New York, Istanbul and Dubai.

Moreover, the transnational criminals abroad clearly have ties at home that complicate their willingness to cooperate with host governments. Mehdiyev did not testify until the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) helped relocate his mother from Azerbaijan to the US and he was granted the “golden ticket” of a legalized stay. However, this tool is becoming more precarious amid the rise of populist movements and anti-immigration agendas across North America and Europe.

Khalid Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani citizen residing in Yonkers, New York, who appeared at Alinejad’s doorstep with an AK-47. Screenshot from US Department of Justice, United States of America v. Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev indictment.

No rules, no boundaries

Transnational criminal groups remain a low-cost, but also low professionalism, policy option for great power adversaries of the West. They have been used time and again by Russia and Iran with few evident reasons to stop this practice. This has several implications for western law enforcement, domestic security services, and diplomatic policymakers.

First, the line between national security and domestic crime will continue to deteriorate and is unlikely to be restored any time soon. Pariah states’ co-option of criminals – especially immigrants – will further securitize immigration and policing debates, as recently seen in Poland, Germany and the UK’s asylum policy restrictions. The Trump administration has also used the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan cartel members, some of whom could now potentially end up in Kosovo.

At the same time, national security organizations may lose valuable leverage in investigating and prosecuting transnational criminal networks working for great power competitors if western governments restrict asylum options for informants and their families, like Mehdiyev’s “golden ticket”. This risk will worsen amid the deteriorating international taboo against refoulement, or the forced return of asylum seekers to countries where they will be in danger. This especially has implications for great power competition when police states are concerned, like in the cases of Uyghurs in China or anti-war activists in Russia. Western authorities may have good reasons to deny asylum cases, but scandalous denials may influence future potential informants to ask: “is that what you might do to me?”

Lastly, western foreign ministries should consider this criminal/state nexus in their calculus for diplomatic limitations on great power competitors. With recent meetings in Istanbul and Riyadh, the United States is in talks with Russia about restoring diplomatic operations, having closed its consulates in San Francisco, Seattle, and annexes in New York and Washington. Governments like Hungary and Slovakia, and European populist parties elsewhere, would also like to see closer diplomatic ties with Russia. Such restorations will be a small but important factor in an eventual war settlement in Ukraine.

The West should remember that, if opened, these facilities are more likely to be staffed by professional operators than mafia hitmen taking selfies with mob tattoos.

Alexander Neuman holds an MA in International Security and a BA in International Politics and Russian and Eurasian Studies from George Mason University. He is also a former visiting student at the University of Warsaw and an alumnus of New Eastern Europe’s Think Tank School.

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arson, Iran, Russia