From Charles Bronson’s Telefon to the Islamic Republic’s Networks of Influence: Who Gives the Orders, and Who Carries Them Out?

Could someone live for years in a free country, with a job and a family, and suddenly become an operative in political violence?

Does an agent always have to be sent from Tehran to assassinate an opponent or destroy a cultural centre?

Telefon, directed by Don Siegel and released in 1977, stars Charles Bronson and tells the story of agents living ordinary lives in America who are activated to commit sabotage when they hear a coded phrase over the telephone. Mind control and hypnosis in the film are cinematic fantasy; but the question it raises is real: who stands behind the seemingly ordinary face of the operative?

Reality is more ruthless than the film. There is no need for a magic code; sometimes money, organisational ties, inducements or an intermediary’s order are enough to draw someone into violence. What must be uncovered is not just the hand that carries out the act, but the chain of command.

From Mykonos to the outsourcing of violence

On the night of 17 September 1992, four Iranian opponents were killed at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. Before the attack, a telephone call alerted the assailants that the victims had arrived. In April 1997, the Berlin court convicted the perpetrators and exposed the role of Iran’s state apparatus in organising the killings. This time, the telephone was part of a real crime, not a Hollywood screenplay.

In 2018, a bombing plot against a gathering of opponents of the Islamic Republic near Paris was also foiled. Asadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Belgium in 2021; but he was released in 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange. The case is a reminder of a bitter truth: even a court conviction does not always mean that the political consequences of an operation have ended.

Today, the methods of carrying out such acts have also taken another form. In May 2024, the Swedish Security Service said that the Islamic Republic was using criminal networks for violent acts. In its official response to a report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, the British government also confirmed that Iranian intelligence agencies use criminal gangs to expand their operational capacity and conceal their role.

This method could be called the ‘outsourcing of violence’: the instigator remains in the shadows, an intermediary passes on the assignment, and the operative may be a criminal who has no ideological commitment to the Islamic Republic and may not even know the full story. Such a method may be cheaper than sending an official agent; what is documented, however, is that it creates distance between the person placing the order and the person carrying it out, making it harder to identify the instigator.

Fire beside a memorial to those who lost their lives in London

On 27 April 2026, a container beside the wall of a memorial to those killed in Iran’s protests in Golders Green, London, was set on fire. In August, Ali-Reza Fallahi, an Iranian-British resident of Ilford, admitted arson. This incident should not be conflated with the arson attack on four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Community Ambulance service in the same area in March 2026; the British government has raised the role of a proxy group linked to the Quds Force in those attacks.

At the 16 October hearing, the court heard that Fallahi claimed he had intended to burn a photograph of Reza Pahlavi because he considered him responsible for his cousin’s death during protests in Iran. A decision on the dispute over the defendant’s precise intention has been deferred until the 27 November hearing.

This explanation raises a serious question. Suppose someone invites teachers to protest peacefully for their rights, and the forces of repression kill one of them. Who is responsible for the death: the person who issued the invitation, or those who fired the shots and gave the orders? Attributing a protester’s death to the person who invited them, without proving incitement to violence or participation in murder, is a shifting of responsibility—a logic that accords with the propaganda of repressive governments.

Even so, the similarity between Fallahi’s words and the Islamic Republic’s narrative does not prove that he was acting on the government’s orders. In the public evidence, no activating call, payment or organisational link involving him has been established. Security experience teaches us precisely not to substitute suspicion for evidence. Asking about possible connections is legitimate; passing judgement before an investigation is not.

A warning London must not ignore

On 13 October 2026, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said that Iran-related operations had led to more than 50 arrests in the UK over the preceding 12 months. He spoke explicitly about Tehran’s use of criminal intermediaries to threaten opponents, Iranian media and Israeli targets, and warned that the threat could extend to military targets. Fifty arrests are not fifty convictions or fifty assassinations; but they are a clear warning bell.

In July 2026, the UK placed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on its list of entities threatening national security under a new state-threats law. This is important, but whether the law is sufficient must be judged by its results: can the police and intelligence services trace the chain from operative to financial intermediary, from intermediary to coordinator and, ultimately, to the instigator? Can journalists and exiled opponents receive practical protection when threatened?

Do European governments share their findings with one another in a timely manner?

The warning is clear: arson targeting a memorial or an attack on a journalist, when there are signs of state involvement, must not be buried in a purely criminal case. But the immigrant community must not be placed under general suspicion through baseless accusations either. The law must protect victims’ safety while also upholding the presumption of innocence.

The face of the operative may have changed—from an organisational agent to a hired criminal. But if the West sees only the arsonist’s hand and turns a blind eye to the chain of command, the planners will remain in the shadows.

The final question is this: once the perpetrator is identified, who is responsible for uncovering the person who set them in motion?

S. Rouzbeh