On February 28, the conflict in the Middle East escalated sharply when Israel and the United States carried out coordinated attacks on Iran in which Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Iran responded by launching drones and missiles across the region.
The United States warns that Iran may have activated sleeper terror cells outside the country, and mentions both Sweden and Norway as possible targets of terrorist attacks, according to the countries’ security services.
Recent events are the culmination of decades of tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and its global terror network. Shortly after the February attacks, the United States intercepted encrypted communications believed to originate in Iran, which may have served as “an operational trigger” for sleeper terror cells abroad, according to the U.S. government. ABC news reported that this warning was passed on to several countries shortly after Khamenei’s death.
The intercepted transmission appeared to contain instructions to “covert agents or sleeper assets” and was sent without using the internet or mobile networks. Last summer, 2025, Iran already threatened to activate sleeper cells in the United States if its nuclear facilities were attacked, according to sources cited by NBC News.
The Iran conflict has increased the risk of terror attacks in Sweden, for example against Swedish Jews and Iranian exiles, according to the Swedish Security Service, which has long warned that Iran and its intelligence services conduct security-threatening activities in Sweden.
On March 8, 2026, an explosion occurred outside the U.S. embassy in Oslo. Norway’s intelligence service (PST) is investigating whether this was a targeted attack linked to Iran and assesses that Iranian intelligence services will carry out intelligence and influence operations in Norway during 2026. Iran also uses proxies in the form of criminal networks, including Swedish networks in Norway, for its operations.
Supported by Russia and China, Iran is described as leading an “axis of resistance” involving several of the world’s most brutal terror groups, aimed at countering U.S. influence and eliminating Israel’s presence in the Middle East.
Israel’s recent war against the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah weakened Iran’s regional network, and Israel is now seeking to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and nuclear program to avert an existential threat.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions have caused international controversy for decades. Since July 2006, the UN Security Council has repeatedly expressed serious concern following reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran’s program involved materials with potential military nuclear applications. Similar UN resolutions were adopted between 2007 and 2015.
When China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—together with the EU—began negotiations with Iran in July 2015 to ensure its nuclear program was exclusively peaceful, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that Israel would not exist in 25 years—i.e., would be annihilated by 2040.
An adviser to Khamenei stated in November 2024 that Iran has the capability to produce nuclear weapons and is prepared to use them, according to NBC News.
In February 2026, the IAEA found highly enriched uranium hidden by Iran in an underground facility that remained undamaged after U.S. and Israeli attacks in summer 2025. The IAEA said it could not confirm that Iran’s program was “exclusively peaceful” because it was denied access. At the same time, the United States stated that Iran had resumed its nuclear program and developed missiles capable of striking the U.S.
On January 28, the New York Times reported that Washington and European allies had presented three demands to Iran: a permanent end to uranium enrichment, strict limits on its ballistic missile program, and a complete halt to supporting regional terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi movement.
On February 6, 2026, Iran and the United States held indirect nuclear talks in Oman. U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff later said Iran began the talks by asserting its right to enrich uranium and boasting it could quickly produce eleven nuclear bombs, according to Israeli media.
It is not only Iran’s nuclear program that concerns the international community. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) finances and develops Islamist terrorist groups and cells worldwide and has been involved in attacks in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, including piracy, kidnappings, assassinations, downing civilian aircraft, human-rights abuses and crimes against humanity.
The U.S. State Department estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion in military support to the Assad regime between 2012 and 2020, during which half a million people were killed in Syria.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah—funded by the IRGC—carried out a wave of kidnappings, bombings, and assassinations on Western targets. The 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina —killing 85 people — has recently been attributed to Iran by an Argentine court, reportedly in retaliation for Argentina halting cooperation—deliveries of nuclear material and technology.
Two Iranians in Sweden linked to the IRGC used false IDs in 2017 to obtain asylum and later planned murders of Swedish Jews and spied on the Iranian diaspora. Suspected of being part of a broader Iranian agent network in Sweden the pair were not prosecuted but deported to Iran in 2022.
