Biker gangs and hired hands: how Iran is increasingly outsourcing its terror campaigns

Experts see potential hallmarks of Iranian involvement in firebombing of four ambulances in Golders Green on Monday

To some it was the moment the mask slipped. Wearing an open-necked white shirt, Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was filmed last March fondly reminiscing with an interviewer from the Tehran-based Dibdan Iran news website about the assassinations he had organised around Europe.

There was Prince Shahriar Shafiq, the last Shah of Iran's 34-year-old nephew, who was shot twice in the head outside his mother's home in Paris in 1979.