t. This was allegedly used by the regime as leverage in forcing her to help lure Zam to his doom.
“We think it was she who lured Ruhollah Zam into this trap,” Vafa Nikfar, a wealthy businessman and close friend of Zam, told France’s Le Point magazine after his abduction. […]
The case was one of several recent examples of opposition exiles being kidnapped by Iranian state security agents after they were lured to third countries. In August, a prominent member of an Iranian militant opposition group based in California was kidnapped by Iranian agents in Dubai. This month Habib Chaab, another militant leader, was caught in what Turkish officials believe was a “honey trap” operation by a female spy who lured him to Istanbul from his exile in Sweden.
“The numbers are increasing and it’s happening the whole time, and no one notices,” said Roya Hakakian, author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a book about Iran’s assassinations abroad. “When in 1989 there was a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the world heard about it. Now . . . targets are not well known enough or famous enough to garner the world’s attention.”
It's obviously a message to Iranian dissidents abroad that, wherever they are, they're never safe from Tehran's reach. It's also a message to the world that Iran has no concern for the normal rules of international diplomacy, and will do whatever it wants.
Let's hope Joe Biden is getting the message, and isn't looking to follow Obama's route with some kind of JCPOA mark 2..
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