A detailed report from The Spectator has revealed the detailed strategies employed by Iran in the assassination of its opponents abroad.

According to the report, Iran is actively transforming the murder-for-hire industry across the US and Europe, contracting out killings to avoid direct involvement.

The Spectator's investigation indicates that Iran employs the same covert tactics abroad that it uses to manage proxy forces like Hezbollah and militia groups across the Middle East, outsourcing murder plots through proxies or criminal gangs.

“There appear to be no set rules for the methods Iran uses to find the criminals to do its work abroad, except to avoid the obvious. Biker gangs and people-traffickers are better able to operate away from the gaze of counter-terrorism police than politically motivated ideologues,” wrote the Spectator.

Plots have reached the highest levels of state. Two years ago, the US charged an Iranian man with attempting to hire a hitman to kill John Bolton, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration, for a lucratively tempting $300,000.

The report highlights the activities of Unit 840, a secretive branch of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, which orchestrates the operations. One of the thwarted plans involved the attempted assassination of Sima Sabet and Fardad Farahzad, two presenters for Iran International TV. While the US has proscribed the IRGC, other nations have as yet failed to make the designation.

Last year the US named Iran the number one state sponsor of terror and countries such as the UK have named it as a leading foreign threat on British soil. Israel’s spy chief last year said dozens of plots against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad had also been foiled.