How Tehran Turns Europe’s Teenagers Into Hitmen

Iran is waging an asymmetric war on the West by outsourcing violence to criminal networks and teenage recruits.

In March 2025, nineteen-year-old Johannes Natland arrived at Manchester Airport. Back home in Stavanger, Norway, he worked part-time at a pizza restaurant. There was nothing remarkable about him.

After leaving the airport, the teenager took a taxi to a secluded location, collected a cache of weapons, and checked into a budget hotel in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. When counterterrorism officers from London’s Metropolitan Police entered his room, they found a plastic bag under the bed containing guns, live ammunition, and thousands of pounds in cash.

Last month, after seventeen hours of deliberation, an Old Bailey jury convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder. He now awaits sentencing.

Natland was recruited online through encrypted messages on Signal. A seventeen-year-old handler approached him after another candidate backed out. Higher up the chain, an English-speaking coordinator known as “Agent 47” issued operational directions, sending maps and video coordinates directly to Natland’s phone. His assignment was to kill an unnamed individual in the UK. He failed. But who was behind the mission?

The answer points to Tehran.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security have turned Europe’s criminal underworld into an extension of their covert operations. Rather than risk their own men, they finance, direct, and protect criminals willing to do the regime’s bidding.

Sweden offers a striking example of this model in practice.