Group claiming Europe antisemitic attacks tells CBS News it will target “U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide”

London — A group that has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks targeting Jewish institutions across Europe told CBS News it will continue targeting U.S. and Israeli interests a day after three men were captured by security cameras torching ambulances used by a global Jewish medical organization in London. 

Hours later, the little known group claimed responsibility for another attack, in which a car was burned in a Jewish neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium.

“We’ll keep threatening U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide until we’ve avenged every child in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and the resistance nations,” a person representing the Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia group [which translate as: The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous] told CBS News late Monday. “We urge people to stay away from Zionist and American interests and individuals to keep themselves safe.”

Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia first announced its existence in early March, after the U.S. and Israel launched the ongoing war on Iran. In the 25 days since, it has claimed a series of antisemitic attacks across Europe. The group’s channel on the Telegram messaging app, where it has published a series of propaganda videos, was created just last week.

Iranian terror, Russian terror, “disaffected teenagers” after easy money, or all of the above?

The shadowy group “looks less like a grassroots European cell that came out of nowhere and more like an astroturfed terror brand that has appeared suddenly in online ecosystems, plugged into an existing Iran-aligned network and experimenting with low-cost, high-visibility operations in Europe,” a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism told CBS News.

CBS News spoke to the administrator of Ashab al-Yamin’s Telegram channel, who exchanged a series of messages — writing in American English — that ranged from explanatory to combative. 

Posts on the account have repeatedly referenced Christian and Jewish philosophy to justify the group’s actions, but there have been no mentions of Islamic principles or teachings.  Ashab al-Yamin’s claims have been published in English, Arabic and even Hebrew, but not in Persian, the primary language spoken in Iran.

The administrator told CBS News the group carried out the arson attack on the London ambulances belonging to the United Hatzalah organization at night to avoid harming people, but the individual warned that approach could change, saying: “We can do it, potentially.”

The administrator, who referred to themself as Asad-Allah, cited the conflicts in Gaza and Iran as justification for targeting Jewish cultural and community centers, as well as a building housing the Dutch office of the Bank of New York Mellon. The latter incident came after Iran threatened to target U.S. financial institutions in the Middle East in retaliation for the ongoing war.

“They appear to be volunteer or paid recruits solicited by pro-Iran elements,” said Sharon Adarlo, a conflict analyst and editor with the online publication Militant Wire.

Adarlo said she expected further attacks by the group, and possibly copycat actions.

While the videos published by the group online have been unsophisticated and amateurish so far, “the danger is that, as this war continues, attacks will be bigger,” Adarlo told CBS News. “Whoever is behind the group wants to make a statement.”

Prior to the London arson attack, Ashab al-Yamin had claimed responsibility for three other confirmed incidents, primarily targeting Jewish sites in three cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. Early Tuesday, it said it had burned cars on a prominent street in Antwerp, Belgium, in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. 

Two days before the first attack, in which someone detonated an improvised explosive in front of a synagogue in Liege, Belgium, a call went out on Telegram channels for Iranian “sleeper cells to activate,” Adarlo said.

The attacks bear a resemblance to other arson and vandalism incidents throughout Europe, including fires set at Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s former home and Ukrainian businesses in the U.K., and vandalism at Jewish cultural and religious centers in France. 

CBS News has tracked dozens of cases in Europe, going back years, that court documents and other evidence show have involved people — predominately young men and often Ukrainian immigrants — recruited via Telegram and other social media platforms with the promise of easy work for cash or cryptocurrency. 

A common factor in most of these cases has been the involvement of intelligence agencies linked to Iran’s close ally, Russia, according to recent research by the The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

While two of the men jailed for organizing the arson attack on an East London warehouse owned by a Ukrainian businessman were found to have willingly acted on behalf of Russia, European court records show that, in some cases, the suspects were unaware of the wider goals of those paying them, or even who they were working for.

Adarlo said she wasn’t sure how, or even if, the suspects in the Ashab al-Yamin cases were connected to Iran. 

“They could be volunteers who contacted IRGC via Telegram, or are being paid a small fee, used by pro-Iran elements to cause trouble,” she said, adding that she could not rule out a possible “organized criminal element” in the group’s actions

Dutch police have arrested five teenagers in connection with a March 13 explosion at a synagogue in Rotterdam that was claimed by Ashab al-Yamin. Two minors were arrested in connection with the Antwerp arson, meanwhile, the prosecutor’s office in the Belgian city told CBS News on Tuesday.

A spokesperson said the two were yet to be questioned and investigators were still considering “all possibilities,” but that the prosecutor was aware of the video purportedly of the incident circulating on social media.

“I think many of these perps are disaffected teenagers who don’t have the strongest ties to Iran … but want to be part of the opposition,” Adarlo explained, noting that Ashab al-Yamin’s videos have included orchestral music rather than the Islamic “nasheeds” commonly used as soundtracks on jihadist propaganda videos.

The propaganda clips are low-budget, the analyst at the Tech Against Terrorism group told CBS News, and they can be pushed rapidly onto social media platforms “to generate psychological impact, media coverage, and an exaggerated sense of reach.”

Ashab al-Yamin’s “ideological language and propaganda style” suggest a hybrid model of local clusters potentially guided from abroad, rather than a large organization based in one country, like a franchised brand, the analyst said.

The amateur nature of the videos and their recent emergence on social media could also point to an opportunist group looking to take credit for other people’s attacks, Neil Basu, a former head of U.K. Counterterrorism Policing, told CBS News. “ISIS used to take credit for every attack by an Islamist anywhere in the world because their view was, ‘We may not have directed it, but we’ve inspired it.’ So, that may be a similar thing playing out here.”

Even “amateurish” attacks and propaganda have an impact

Acts carried out through proxies are “incredibly useful” for state sponsors of terror because they can be disruptive, but give the sponsoring regimes plausible deniability, enabling them to avoid escalation toward a conflict they may not be able to win, Basu said. 

“It doesn’t matter that it’s amateurish” if the attack “sows a bit of chaos and … does divert resources into trying to protect places,” he said.

The Ashab al-Yamin administrator did not answer questions about the group’s structure or whether anyone was being paid, and they deleted their Telegram account shortly after the conversation with CBS News.

The State Department on Sunday urged Americans around the world to “exercise increased caution,” noting that, in addition to U.S. diplomatic facilities being targeted in the Middle East and elsewhere, “groups supportive of Iran may target other U.S. interests overseas or locations associated with the United States and/or Americans throughout the world.”

What are European nations doing to address the attacks, and the threat?

London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement Monday that it was analyzing security video of the ambulance attack and detectives were, “aware of an online claim from a group taking responsibility for the attack and enquiries are ongoing to establish the authenticity and accuracy of this claim.” 

No arrests had been announced as of Tuesday.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the arson attack as “horrifying” and said he would remain in contact with Jewish community leaders, vowing to “fight the poison that is antisemitism.”

Basu warned against jumping to any conclusions about the London arson being sponsored directly by Iran’s government or military, or an Iranian state-backed proxy group, and he said the London police force had the skills and expertise to make that determination.

CBS News asked the London police on Tuesday if any additional steps were being taken to protect Jewish or American sites in the British capital, but there was no immediate response from the force.

Soldiers have been deployed on the streets of Belgian cities recently to provide extra security after attacks on Jewish sites in Belgium and next door in the Netherlands, which is, the Reuters news agency reported. Italy has implemented similar measures around prominent Jewish institutions for some time. 

CBS News asked Europol, the European Union’s agency that supports member states’ in “preventing and combatting all forms of serious international and organized crime, cybercrime and terrorism,” if it was taking any specific action to prevent future attacks, given Ashab al-Yamin’s threat. 

A spokesperson said the pan-European agency “does not deal with preventative” matters. 

“We support police investigations,” the spokesperson said, referring further enquiries to individual member nations’ respective authorities.