6 minWorld
Experts Warn Iran May Escalate Shadow War After Two Suspected Terror Attacks
Counterterrorism analysts say Iran could increasingly rely on covert operatives and proxies as conflict with the U.S. and Israel continues, following a suspected plot near a British air base and a stabbing aboard a FlyDubai flight.
Two suspected terror attacks are raising questions about whether Iran is shifting its strategy toward more aggressive covert operations, but counterterrorism experts caution that the evidence linking Tehran to both incidents remains incomplete and uneven.
The incidents — a suspected plot near RAF Fairford, a British air base used by U.S. forces, and a stabbing aboard an Israel-bound FlyDubai flight — have drawn attention to Iran's long-standing use of proxies, criminal networks and hired operatives to threaten adversaries while maintaining plausible deniability. Neither investigation has publicly established that the Iranian government directed the attacks, and Iran has denied involvement in the Fairford case.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there are «strong indications» Iran played a role in the suspected plot near RAF Fairford. Counterterrorism police have arrested a dual UK-Iranian national on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. President Donald Trump said early information he has received points to a possible Iranian connection to the FlyDubai attack, in which a co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain and attempted to crash the aircraft with more than 180 people aboard. The United Arab Emirates and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have described the FlyDubai incident as terrorism, but UAE authorities have not publicly attributed the attack to Iran.
Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Fairford case fits more closely with Iran's recent use of hired operatives and intermediaries. «The attack on the airbase in the United Kingdom does fit more recent patterns,» Byman said, while stressing how much remains unknown about the investigation. The FlyDubai attack, by contrast, would represent a more significant departure. «That is quite different, and that is something that Iran in the past, at least we haven't seen Iran do,» Byman said. «It is plausible to me that Iran is involved, but that seems like much more of a stretch based on Iran's traditional way of operating.»
Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury and FBI counterterrorism official who now directs the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute, said Iran has increasingly sought to put more distance between itself and the people carrying out overseas operations. «Typically Iran does not admit that it's involved in these types of attacks because it wants reasonable deniability,» Levitt said. «If Iran shoots a drone or a missile at you, you know where it came from and you know where to shoot back. But if Iran uses proxies, and recruits people and does things in a covert manner, it might not be so easy to point a finger back at Iran or to know exactly who did it.»
That capability matters in part because Iran does not have the conventional military strength to match the United States and its allies directly, Levitt said. «They just don't have the capability to fight soldier to soldier, airplane to airplane in an all-out kinetic war, but they're extremely effective at asymmetric warfare, at covert terrorist activity, if that's what this proves to be,» he said.
Recent U.S. prosecutions have shown how far that playbook can extend. Federal cases have accused Iranian operatives of seeking to recruit hitmen to kill U.S. officials and using Eastern European organized crime figures in a murder-for-hire plot targeting Iranian-American journalist and dissident Masih Alinejad in New York. Those operations relied on the same basic advantage: Tehran could pursue targets overseas without launching a conventional attack that immediately identified Iran as the aggressor.
The question now is whether the current conflict gives Iran reason to push that strategy further. Levitt said Tehran could pursue overseas plots in an effort to pressure Western governments to end the conflict by demonstrating that Iran can impose costs far beyond the conventional battlefield. If Fairford and FlyDubai are ultimately tied to Tehran, he said, they would stand out because they involve harder targets and potentially more ambitious tactics than the assassinations, kidnappings, shootings and smaller-scale bombings Iran has more commonly pursued overseas. «Perhaps this is the new normal, and Iran wants to demonstrate that it can exact a higher cost,» Levitt said.
Byman, however, pointed to several reasons Tehran could exercise restraint. Iran already has other ways to pressure Washington and its allies, while a terrorist attack against Americans could backfire by uniting U.S. public opinion behind further escalation against Tehran, he said. U.S. and Israeli strikes against senior Iranian intelligence and security officials may also have disrupted some of the networks Tehran would need for overseas operations. «If Iran wants to go further, then terrorism does become more of an option,» Byman said.
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