DOJ: Iran’s Proxies Targeted Jews and U.S. Troops, and One Kept Plotting From a New York Jail

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on November 11, 2026

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an eight-count superseding indictment Tuesday against three men who, they say, worked for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hizballah. The Justice Department ties them to “nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States.” Separately, it ties them to a September plot against RAF Fairford, a British air base that was then housing U.S. military aircraft and personnel.

One of the three was already in American custody when the Fairford plot came together. According to the government, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi kept the operation moving by passing coded messages through phone calls with his family in Iraq. The Associated Press reports he is held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

These are allegations, and all three defendants are presumed innocent. If proven, they settle an argument Washington has been having since the midterms.

What the indictment alleges

The defendants are al-Saadi, 32, a dual Iraqi-Iranian citizen; Mohsen Mohajeri, 48, an Iranian the DOJ calls “an operative of the IRGC”; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, 35, an Iraqi. Only al-Saadi is in U.S. custody, according to the AP.

Prosecutors say the European campaign ran under a made-up name, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or HAYI, which they describe as “a front for Kata’ib Hizballah and other FTOs.” HAYI claimed 18 attacks across Europe in the spring of 2026, seven of them in the United Kingdom. Prosecutors say al-Saadi also tried to arrange attacks in the United States in March and April, including one targeting a Manhattan synagogue. They included arsons, explosives, and the near-fatal stabbing in London of two Jewish men, one of them a dual U.S.-British citizen.

On April 6, Mohajeri and al-Hassani allegedly sat in a room in Iraq with a map of London on a screen while al-Hassani said, “we need to get focused on London.” HAYI claimed six attacks in and around London starting about a week later. On April 17, the three men allegedly watched an attack live over FaceTime, projected onto a large screen in front of the HAYI logo, as al-Hassani told the attacker to “light it” and “throw the fourth one.” The next day, during an attack on a London synagogue, al-Hassani allegedly told the person on the call to “light it up like a Christmas tree.”

The plot that ran through a jail phone

Al-Saadi was arrested abroad on May 1 and handed to the FBI on May 14, according to the DOJ’s May release. Prosecutors say no attacks attributable to the three men followed for about four months.

In August, al-Hassani allegedly paid a U.K. contact to scout the perimeter of RAF Fairford. In September, he allegedly paid others to buy vans and barrels of fuel, research chemical accelerants including “large quantities of potassium chloride,” and buy metal objects that could serve as shrapnel. Decals made the vans look like a fuel delivery company and a pool supply business. On Sept. 26, three vans headed for the base. At least two were stopped at a security roadblock, and British police arrested the occupants early the next morning.

The government says al-Saadi’s calls home from jail were part of the plot. In June and July, he allegedly asked his sister, “What are they doing about all our old work?” She told him “it isn’t cancelled.” On Sept. 24, he allegedly asked about “Ali,” which prosecutors say was his name for al-Hassani, and told his family to “give him money so we can do it.” The Fairford attempt came three days later.

“The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real.” — U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald, Southern District of New York

The AP, citing court filings, reports that the FBI monitored and recorded al-Saadi’s calls, that he had been held in solitary confinement, and that he still made nine phone or video calls between June and September. Only then was he cut to one hour-long call a month. Monitoring a call isn’t the same as stopping one. A man the DOJ calls a longtime IRGC and Kata’ib Hizballah operative kept calling home while a plot against a base housing American troops took shape. Congress should ask the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI who approved those calls and what they flagged. MDC Brooklyn already has a record: the Bureau of Prisons ran a multi-agency sweep there in 2024 that seized electronic devices, drugs and homemade weapons.

The “end the war” argument meets the record

After the midterms, Vice President JD Vance argued that the Iran war was the central reason Republicans lost, Jewish Insider reported. Karl Rove answered with exit polls showing only 4% of voters named foreign policy as their top issue. The polling is debatable. The premise underneath it, that America could step back and the threat would go away, is the real problem.

According to this indictment, Tehran’s network went after synagogues in London and Manhattan and a base hosting American aircrews in Britain, and kept going after one operative was in a U.S. jail. Jews and Americans were on the same target list. The AP reports the U.S. pulled its bombers out of Fairford after the arrests. That’s what this war has already cost.

Restraint is a sound classical liberal instinct against an enemy that can be deterred. The government’s evidence describes a regime-backed network that keeps attacking whether or not anyone negotiates. Prosecute these men in open court, and close the gaps that let a jailed operative keep working.

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice (Nov. 10 and May 28, 2026 releases; superseding indictment, S.D.N.Y.); Associated Press via The Boston Globe; Federal Bureau of Prisons; Jewish Insider.

TNT Staff