Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Iran’s intelligence services were able to operate with remarkable freedom inside Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government, targeting dissidents and critics of Tehran with little apparent interference from Turkish authorities, according to the details of a lawsuit filed in US federal court.
The lawsuit describes Turkey as a permissive environment where Iranian intelligence officers allegedly tracked, threatened, assaulted and attempted to assassinate a 57-year-old Iranian-American activist while also using intimidation against his family in Iran in an effort to silence his reporting.
The civil complaint, filed on July 2 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks damages from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).
The plaintiff, named Alex Smith in the complaint, alleges that Iran’s intelligence apparatus carried out hostage-taking, torture, attempted extrajudicial killing and transnational repression against him after he became a US citizen in 2017.
Although the lawsuit identifies the plaintiff only as Alex Smith, Nordic Monitor determined that his original name is Akbar Amirzadeh Irani, an Iranian human rights activist and former journalist who legally changed his name after settling in the United States in 2016. After fleeing Iran, Smith continued documenting human rights abuses and analyzing Iranian influence networks from neighboring Azerbaijan, where he worked on refugee-related issues in cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the US Embassy in Baku.
He is the founder of the Cyrus National Covenant Party, a political organization within the Iranian opposition that aims to establish a secular and democratic Iran. He has also served as an official representative and spokesperson for several Iranian political prisoners, including Arzhang Davoodi, an Iranian writer and activist who spent nearly two decades in prison before his release in March 2022.
The lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court contains explosive allegations detailing how Iranian intelligence operatives were able to operate with impunity in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government:
Although the lawsuit is not directed against Turkey, many of the alleged attacks are said to have occurred on Turkish territory, raising fresh questions about Ankara’s willingness or ability to curb clandestine operations conducted by Iranian security services on Turkish soil.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff had long been targeted by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) because of his journalism and investigations exposing corruption, illicit financial networks and abuses of power within the Iranian regime. After surviving imprisonment and torture in Iran and later resettling in the US, he continued his reporting while spending significant time in Turkey.
The lawsuit portrays Turkey not merely as a transit country but as an active operational theater for Iranian intelligence.
One of the earliest Turkey-related allegations concerns the plaintiff’s cousin, who allegedly met with him in Istanbul in 2019. The complaint says the cousin was subsequently arrested by the IRGC Intelligence Organization in February 2020 solely because of that meeting. He allegedly spent approximately two months in detention, where he was beaten, tortured and threatened with death.
The lawsuit claims Iranian authorities repeatedly used relatives as hostages to pressure the plaintiff into abandoning his journalism, remaining silent and becoming an informant for the regime. His wife, stepson, mother and sister were also allegedly detained, interrogated and tortured between 2021 and 2022.
The most striking allegations concern events that allegedly unfolded in Istanbul. According to the complaint, between 2023 and 2025 the plaintiff received repeated threats from Iranian agents while living in Turkey. Those threats allegedly included warnings that his daughter and sister would be killed, promises to “set his life on fire” and demands that he leave Turkey and stop his political and journalistic work.
The complaint further alleges that Iranian operatives escalated from threats to violence. It claims that two Iranian nationals working with a Turkish national launched an armed attack on the plaintiff’s office in Istanbul in an attempt to assassinate him. According to the lawsuit, the incident was reported to Turkish police.
The plaintiff further alleges that on May 25, 2025, the same individuals intercepted his vehicle in Istanbul’s Bostancı neighborhood and assaulted him in broad daylight before later setting fire to his office, destroying his workplace and professional records. The complaint says reports and video evidence of the arson have been provided to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The complaint also alleges that Iranian officials expanded their intimidation campaign beyond Turkey. According to the filing, the plaintiff received a message in April 2026 threatening to kill him if he continued speaking publicly. The message allegedly referenced the use of proxy operatives associated with Hezbollah and Hamas to carry out the assassination.
Even after relocating to the United States, the plaintiff claims he continued receiving threatening telephone calls from someone identifying himself as an IRGC member, who allegedly claimed that Iran had numerous operatives in the Washington metropolitan area, including individuals associated with Hezbollah and Hamas. The lawsuit says these threats were reported to both the FBI and local police.
The complaint holds two of Iran’s largest state-owned energy companies liable along with the Iranian government. The lawsuit argues that revenues generated by NIOC and NITC are integrated into Iran’s national budget and finance the country’s intelligence, detention and security apparatus. It therefore alleges that the companies helped sustain the machinery responsible for hostage-taking, torture and attempted assassination directed against the plaintiff and his family.
The allegations add to a growing body of reporting and law enforcement investigations suggesting that Turkey has increasingly become a venue for Iranian intelligence activities targeting dissidents, defectors and political opponents living abroad.
Over the past decade multiple plots linked to Iranian intelligence have surfaced in Turkey, including kidnappings, surveillance operations and assassination attempts directed at Iranian dissidents. While Turkish authorities have occasionally announced arrests of suspected Iranian intelligence operatives, enforcement has often been selective and inconsistent.
The complaint paints a picture of an Iranian-American who says he was forced to abandon his office, livelihood and residence in Turkey after repeated attacks. It alleges that the sustained campaign ultimately caused severe psychological trauma, economic loss and a heart attack that the plaintiff attributes to years of intimidation and persecution.
The allegations echo the 2020 abduction of Swedish-Iranian dissident Habib Farajollah Chaab from Turkey, a case Nordic Monitor previously described as a covert operation involving Iranian intelligence, Turkish intelligence and criminal intermediaries. Chaab was taken from Istanbul to Iran, later forced into televised confessions and executed in May 2023.
Although Turkey denied involvement, UN rapporteurs cited an Iranian parliamentary official as saying Chaab had been returned to Iran by Turkish authorities through the West Azerbaijan border crossing as part of an intelligence operation. The case also exposed the role of Iranian drug trafficker Naji Sharifi Zindashti, who maintained ties with senior Turkish officials and later was wanted by the FBI over an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting Iranian dissidents in the United States.
