LONDON: Ivanka Trump, the daughter of US President Donald Trump, was allegedly singled out in a revenge plot linked to the 2020 US drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani — a detail now casting fresh light on what US prosecutors describe as a sprawling Iran-linked terror network spanning Europe and North America.
According to reporting cited by the New York Post, Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Al-Saadi — recently arrested in Turkiye and extradited to the US — allegedly discussed targeting Ivanka because of her father’s role in Soleimani’s killing.
Investigators reportedly said Al-Saadi possessed a blueprint of her Florida residence and had posted threats online, including a map of the area around the home she shares with Jared Kushner.
US President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, shown in this photo with her husband, Jared Kushner, the daughter of US President Donald Trump, was allegedly singled out in a revenge plot linked to the 2020 US drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. (AFP/File photo)
One cited Arabic-language message reportedly warned that “neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you,” while another post allegedly threatened to “burn down the house of Trump” in retaliation.
When US and Turkish authorities arrested Al-Saadi in Turkiye on May 15, charges later unsealed in federal court in New York painted a troubling portrait. Prosecutors say Al-Saadi was a senior operative in an Iran-backed militia who helped plot attacks across two continents.
Announcing Al-Saadi’s arrest, the US Justice Department said he faces six “terrorism-related charges” tied to alleged activities with Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah — a US-designated foreign terrorist organization — and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Taken into custody in Turkiye before being handed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and transferred to the US, Al-Saadi appeared in a Manhattan federal court and was detained pending trial.
Judge Sarah Netburn presides as Mohammad Al-Saadi, accused of planning an attack on a synagogue, appears in federal court in Manhattan, New York, on May 15, 2026 in this courtroom sketch. (Reuters)
The 32-year-old Iraqi national “directed and urged others to attack US and Israeli interests” to further the “terrorist goals” of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC, according to court papers.
The charges include conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to provide material support for acts of terrorism, and conspiracy to bomb a place of public use.
His defense lawyer, Andrew Dalack, told CBS News that his client was “essentially being subjected to a political prosecution in that he’s a prisoner of war and should be treated as such.”
Al-Saadi, through Dalack, accused the US government of targeting him solely for his past ties to Soleimani, former commander of the IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Force, who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
This photograph of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, left, with Qasem Soleimani, was featured on Al-Saadi's Snapchat account, according to a federal criminal complaint. Soleimani is the Iranian commander who was killed in January 2020 by a US drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump at Baghdad International Airport. (FBI-NY)
Dalack told the BBC that his client was being held in solitary confinement, “which we think is cruel and unnecessary.”
Prosecutors say Al-Saadi was involved in the “planning, execution and promotion” of around 18 attacks in Europe — including bombings of synagogues and community centers in Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK — as well as two attacks in Canada targeting US and Israeli interests.
These were allegedly carried out under the banner of Harakat Ashab Al-Yamin Al-Islamiya, a component of Kataib Hezbollah.
The attacks began on March 9, just days after the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran — a timeline prosecutors say underscores the scale and coordination of the alleged campaign.
Police officers stand outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam, Netherlands, following an explosion that caused minor damages on March 14, 2026. (Reuters)
Among them was a bombing at a synagogue in Liege, Belgium, on March 9; an arson attack at a synagogue in Rotterdam on March 13; an explosive attack at a Jewish school in Amsterdam the following day; and another at the Bank of New York Mellon in the same city on March 15.
The federal complaint also links Al-Saadi to an April 29 stabbing in London’s Golders Green neighborhood, where intelligence gathering later revealed operatives possessed detailed maps, reconnaissance photographs and specific logistical plans provided by their handlers.
Arson investigators survey burnt-out volunteer ambulances in Golders Green, north London, on March 24, 2026. The emergency vehicles, operated by a Jewish organization, were set ablaze the previous night. (AFP/File Photo)
“In the span of just three months, Mohammad Al-Saadi allegedly directed 18 terrorist attacks throughout Europe — including against US citizens and interests — and planned to conduct a similar attack here in our country,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said in a statement.
The complaint ties Al-Saadi to prominent figures in Iran’s regional network. Prosecutors say he worked closely with Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the Kataib Hezbollah leader killed alongside Soleimani in 2020.
The Justice Department says Iran and the IRGC “use other terrorist and paramilitary proxies in the region to take lethal action and to carry out operations against the US and its allies,” with Kataib Hezbollah receiving “extensive training, funding, logistical support, weapons, and intelligence” from the Quds Force.
FASTFACTS:
• Prosecutors say Al-Saadi helped coordinate 20 attacks across Europe and North America.
• Experts warn lone-wolf and decentralized attacks generate fewer intelligence signals.
• Investigators say cryptocurrency and encrypted apps enabled recruitment, payments and planning.
The arrest has raised questions about whether Western security services are equipped to counter a new generation of decentralized extremist networks.
Instead of deploying highly trained state assets, the networks allegedly recruit local criminals and radicalized individuals to carry out attacks for direct financial compensation — a model that bypasses traditional border security by striking high-value targets without infiltrating foreign nationals.
Al-Saadi is alleged to have used cryptocurrency to pay an FBI undercover agent — posing as a Mexican drug cartel boss — $3,000 as an advance, with another $7,000 to follow if attacks on specific US targets had been carried out and recorded.
“Authorities are still largely calibrated for hierarchical, state-linked threats and not the diffuse, hybrid networks now emerging,” Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Arab News.
“The real gap is not awareness but adaptation. Security systems can disrupt centralized plots, but they remain far less effective against decentralized actors operating in the gray zone between state sponsorship, private networks, and opportunistic militancy, where attribution is murky and deterrence is far harder to apply.”
Al-Saadi is alleged to have used cryptocurrency to pay an FBI undercover agent. (Shutterstock image)
Recruitment for such networks, The Guardian reported on May 18, occurs on social platforms including Snapchat and Telegram — often in channels used for drug trading and other criminal activity — with encrypted messaging apps and virtual currencies supplying new means to direct recruits and move resources.
“We are now entering an era of terrorism as a service,” Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at King’s College London, told the British newspaper. “There have been discussions in recent years about hiring criminals who provide a service.”
Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security at London’s Royal United Services Institute, said: “You don’t have to be in even the same time zone as your agents.”
“They are disposable,” he told The Guardian. “They are cannon fodder, useful idiots in the genuine sense of the word.”
Metropolitan Police officials have reportedly characterized the current threat environment as one of the most complex in recent history — an assessment that aligns with broader data on terrorism trends.
The 2025 Global Terrorism Index found that terrorist incidents in the West rose to more than 50 in 2024, up from 32 the prior year. This reflects a shift from large-scale, coordinated plots toward decentralized violence by individuals who radicalize quickly and act with little logistical support — and driven by a mix of ideologies rather than any single movement.
The 2026 Global Terrorism Index showed the trend accelerating, with deaths from terrorist attacks in the West rising 280 percent to 57 in 2025, driven in part by mass-casualty events such as the New Orleans truck attack in January of that year and the Bondi Beach shooting in Australia in December.
Lone-wolf actors carried out 93 percent of fatal terrorist attacks in the West over the last five years and were three times more likely to successfully execute an attack than groups of two or more plotters, according to the index.
Perhaps most striking, children and adolescents were the focus of 42 percent of all terror-related investigations in Europe and North America in 2025 — triple the share in 2021.
Arman Mahmoudian, a research fellow at the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute, warned that the pattern may intensify amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East.
“In recent years, the West has seen a series of lone-wolf terrorist attacks targeting Western civilians and institutions, most often inspired by groups such as Al-Qaeda and (Daesh),” he told Arab News.
Given recent developments involving Iran, he added, and the toll that recent wars have taken on the leadership and command of its proxy militias across the Middle East, “there is a possibility that we may also see some level of decentralized or lone-wolf attacks inspired by these groups against Western targets.”
“This raises the broader question of Western capabilities to counter such threats,” Mahmoudian said.
He highlighted that such attacks are harder to detect precisely because they generate fewer signals.
“Isolated or lone-wolf attacks are much harder to prevent than centralized operations,” Mahmoudian said.
“Centralized attacks usually involve communication, movement, transportation, and the transfer of funds, equipment, or personnel. These activities create opportunities for surveillance and disruption.
“Lone-wolf attacks, by contrast, often lack these indicators, which makes them more difficult to detect in advance.”
Infographic generated by Gemini (Google AI)
Yet Mahmoudian cautions against overstating the threat.
“The main limitation of lone-wolf attacks is scale,” he said. “Since they usually lack organizational backing, they tend to be smaller and less sophisticated than centrally planned operations.”
The key, he argues, lies in early intervention — particularly online.
“Prevention requires a high level of monitoring across social media and communication platforms, since individuals are often radicalized or inspired by what they read online, in the news, or through extremist clerics and networks operating in the West.”
This approach, however, carries its own complications. It creates “major political and legal tensions, especially around freedom of speech, privacy, and freedom of information,” Mahmoudian said.
“Since 9/11, the US has introduced laws that give the government more flexibility in counterterrorism, most notably through the Patriot Act. European countries, however, have generally been more constrained in this area.
“For that reason, I believe Europe may have a harder time countering decentralized terrorist attacks than the US.”
When Al-Saadi — who faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges against him — was arrested in Turkiye, it looked like a straightforward counterterrorism success.
But the network he allegedly helped build suggests that the more difficult work, including dismantling the model, lies ahead.
