Executive Summary

Intelligence agencies—namely Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)*—since at least 2024 have incorporated into their operations in Europe minors as proxies to carry out attacks and collect sensitive information. We assess that the services are driven to this tactic by a loss of direct access by trained intelligence operatives as the result of European security services’ defensive operations, coupled with the low cost, online accessibility, and recruitability of youth. For their part, involved minors likely are motivated by the spectrum of factors that drive juvenile involvement in criminal activity; we cannot rule out the possibility of threats and blackmail.

*For related reports on covert action and the IRGC’s use of Swedish criminal proxies, see the Grey Dynamics reports, titled Covert Action Today: New Players, Proxy Ops, Digital Footprints and Iranian Covert Action in Scandinavia: Swedish Gangs as Proxies.