New Terrorist Activity Expanding Across Europe

Iran: New Terrorist Activity in Europe

by Con Coughlin

• One of the more disturbing discoveries regarding Iran's ever-expanding terrorism horizons has emerged in London where it was revealed by the Daily Telegraph earlier this month that a terrorist cell with links to Iran had been caught stockpiling tonnes of explosive materials on the outskirts of London at a secret bomb factory.
  
  
• British intelligence officials have now concluded the stockpile was part of an international Hizbollah plot to lay the foundations for future terror attacks in Europe.
  
  
• One positive outcome from Iran's increased terrorist activity has been to persuade the British government finally to designate the entire Hizbollah organisation as a terrorist organisation.
  
  
• Now, with Iran being held responsible for the latest escalation in tensions in the Gulf, Britain and other European powers should demonstrate their resolve to oppose Iran's well-documented sponsorship of terrorism by backing the Trump administration in its latest confrontation with the ayatollahs.
  
  

Iran is intensifying its efforts to build a global terror network as the ayatollahs come under increasing economic and political pressure resulting from US sanctions.

While US officials continue to investigate Iran's involvement in the recent series of attacks on a number of oil tankers operating in the Gulf, counter-terrorism experts have uncovered evidence that Iran is also working hard to develop its terrorist infrastructure well beyond the confines of the Middle East.

Intelligence officials are particularly concerned about Iran's activities in Europe where they have identified a recent upsurge in Iranian-sponsored terrorist activity.

European security officials have registered a significant upsurge in Iranian-backed terrorist activity. In June last year two Iranian diplomats were expelled from the Netherlands for plotting political assassinations in the country, while the same month France's intelligence ministry foiled a bomb plot to target a rally of opposition groups in Paris. Then in October the Danish authorities accused Iran of an "unusual and serious" plot to murder an Arab separatist leader.

One of the more disturbing discoveries regarding Iran's ever-expanding terrorism horizons has emerged in London where it was revealed by the Daily Telegraph earlier this month that a terrorist cell with links to Iran had been caught stockpiling tonnes of explosive materials on the outskirts of London at a secret bomb factory.

The Hizbollah cell was found to have stashed thousands of disposable ice packs containing ammonium nitrate -- a common ingredient in homemade bombs. Ammonium nitrate was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed at least 168 people.