NEW YORK – A commander of an Iranian-backed militia has been charged with plotting to attack Jewish sites in the US, including a synagogue in New York City, and carrying out terror attacks in Europe as part of a broader campaign of retaliation by Iran since the war began in February.
A criminal complaint unsealed on May 15 accused the commander, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, of planning at least 20 attacks against US and Israeli interests in Europe and Canada since late February.
Al-Saadi was detained in Turkey recently and handed over to the US authorities, al-Saadi’s lawyer said in federal court in Manhattan on May 15.
Al-Saadi, according to the complaint, is a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia that is a proxy for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and has helped Tehran project power across the region, including through attacks on US forces and diplomatic targets.
While Kataib Hezbollah has long been one of the most important groups serving as an armed proxy for Iran in the Middle East, it does not have a history of organising attacks outside the region.
From its inception, Kataib Hezbollah has been closely tied to Iran’s Quds Force – the overseas arm of the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
It made evicting US forces from Iraq a primary focus. Kataib Hezbollah’s repeated attacks on US Army posts in Iraq and Syria over the years contributed to Washington’s decision in 2009 to designate it as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The complaint says that al-Saadi planned to kill “Americans and Jews” in Los Angeles and Arizona and that he had started planning an attack on a synagogue in New York City.
Al-Saadi is one of the highest-level figures tied to Iran known to have been arrested by the US since the start of the war. For years, and during the current conflict, the US and Israel have focused on killing Iranian officials.
Al-Saadi’s case appears to involve the kind of retaliatory act of terrorism that US officials have long anticipated and feared. NYTIMES
