Iran is governed by assholes.

Now that we have that little bit of belaboring the obvious over with, let’s look at the words of a UK terrorism expert, Matt Jukes, head of Counter Terrorism Policing in Britain, who informs us that Iran is stepping up efforts to assassinate key officials in other nations.

Iran reportedly hired a hitman to kidnap or kill former national security adviser John Bolton, who now lives with Secret Service posted outside his home after the administration killed Qasem Soleimani, arguably the top military official in Iran who was responsible for a large portion of the terrorism in the region and around the world.

Iran typically tries to hire hitmen who are already a part of criminal enterprises to carry out their assassination plots on foreign soil.

In the U.S., Iran reportedly hired a private investigator to follow dissident activist Masih Alinejad around, take photographs of her, and document her whereabouts. They initially planned to kidnap her but, when the plot failed, they paid a man $30,000 to attempt to murder her at her home in Brooklyn.

Matt Jukes, head of Counter Terrorism Policing in Britain, said that Iran uses proxies to carry out assassination attempts because they are typically “not being tracked by intelligence or security agencies.”

He said that in the U.K. they have foiled 15 Iranian kidnapping and assassination attempts in the last year.

A nation-state, one might note, even a shithole like Iran, has resources and capabilities far above and beyond the casual assassin or even semi-organized terror groups like Hamas.  If the Bronze-Age barbarians in Tehran decide they want someone really dead, they have resources at hand.

It’s also important to remember that such an act would be a game-changer, should the assassination target be a senior government official or even a head of state.  That would then rise to the level, one would think, of an act of war, and the nation from which the target came from would be justified in reacting accordingly.

I’m not saying that would result in Tehran suddenly being a white-hot radioactive crater, but it’s not impossible. Unfortunately for the West and anyone else who Iran may view askance, only the rank-and-file people of Iran will ever be able to mount any real, lasting change in that nation who is now and has been ruled by savages.