Iran reportedly hired Georgian mafia figure in attempt to assassinate Azerbaijani rabbi

Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, reportedly hired a figure from the Georgian criminal underworld to carry out an ultimately unsuccessful hit on an Azerbaijani rabbi, the Washington Post reported on 5 April, citing sources.

Quds Force representatives reportedly offered Agil Aslanov, a Georgian national of Azerbaijani descent, $200,000 in order to assassinate Rabbi Shneor Segal.

Sources told the Washington Post that Aslanov had recruited an Azerbaijani local to surveil Segal and ultimately pull the trigger, but Azerbaijan’s State Security Service caught on to the plot and arrested both Aslanov and his accomplice.

Segal said that he only learned of the assassination plot after the fact, and told the Washington Post that he still felt safe living in Azerbaijan.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan’s Jewish community has dwindled from its peak of some 40,000, and now numbers just a few thousand.

It is not the first time that the Iranian government has been accused of recruiting Georgians and Azerbaijanis to carry out hits against perceived opponents of the government abroad.

In March, two citizens of Georgia and Azerbaijan, both of whom were reportedly involved in the criminal underworld, were convicted in the US of attempting to orchestrate the assassination of exiled Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad in exchange for $500,000 from the Iranian government.

The assassination had also been ordered by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the US said.

While relations between Azerbaijan and Iran, which has a significant minority of ethnic Azerbaijanis, have never been warm, tensions have continued to rise in recent years.

At the same time, there has been growing speculation of a trilateral US–Azerbaijan–Israel alliance, particularly framed as a bulwark against Iran.

Against this backdrop, some pro-government Azerbaijani media outlets interpreted the uncovering of the plot against Segal as a sign that Iran is ‘playing with fire’ and that it is not ‘the first instance of Iranian-backed terror in Azerbaijan’.

‘Yes, Azerbaijan continues to advocate for peaceful and neighborly relations with Iran and has repeatedly stated it would not allow its territory to become an anti-Iranian staging ground. But Baku will not tolerate a constant terrorist threat from the south’, an op-ed in Aze.media read.