“Houthis launch long-range missile attack against Israel,” Axios, 9-15-24.

“Iran’s president to attend BRICS summit in Russia,” Politico, 9-15-24.

“Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to target critics,” WPost, 9-15-24.  This is the type of story that everyone should read and understand the depths and bizarre schemes that the Quds Force and the IRGC use.  “Iran’s alleged reliance on criminals rather than covert operatives underscored an alarming evolution in tactics by a nation that U.S. and Western security officials consider one of the world’s most determined and dangerous practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of violence and intimidation in others’ sovereign territory to silence dissidents, journalists and others deemed disloyal. Senior security officials said that the use of criminal proxies by governments has compounded the difficulty of protecting those who have sought refuge in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Security services formerly focused on tracking operatives from Russia’s GRU spy agency or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) now confront plots handed off — often through encrypted channels — to criminal networks deeply embedded in Western society. In recent years, Iran has outsourced lethal operations and abductions to Hells Angels biker gangs, a notorious Russian mob network known as “Thieves in Law,” a heroin distribution syndicate led by an Iranian narco-trafficker and violent criminal groups from Scandinavia to South America.”