British authorities had done even more to protect Iran International, the London-based satellite news channel that airs the weekly program of the journalist, Pouria Zeraati, and has built an audience of millions in Iran despite being outlawed by the Islamic republic.
Instead, officials said, Iran hired criminals in Eastern Europe who encountered few obstacles as they cleared security checks at Heathrow Airport, spent days tracking Zeraati and then caught departing flights just hours after carrying out an ambush that their victim survived.
Iran's alleged reliance on criminals rather than covert operatives underscored an alarming evolution in tactics by a nation that U.S. and Western security officials consider one of the world's most determined and dangerous practitioners of modern guerrilla warfare.
Police assigned a team of undercover officers to safeguard the channel's employees, arrested a suspect caught surveilling the station's entrances, put armored cars outside its headquarters...
None of these measures managed to protect Zeraati from the plot that Iran is suspected of setting in motion this year. On March 29, he was stabbed four times and left bleeding.
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