One evening in May 2024, in the city of Västerås, Sweden, 90 kilometers from the capital city of Stockholm, a 15-year-old boy waited for his mother to fall asleep. Shortly before midnight, the boy quietly got out of bed, slipped outside, and got into an Uber, which drove him to the Israeli embassy to murder Israelis. On the way to the embassy, the teen picked up a gun from a certain location according to instructions he received on his cell phone. As he approached the embassy, blue lights flashed behind the Uber. The police had thwarted his plan. Just over 24 hours later, a younger teen, 14 years old, did succeed. He picked up a 9mm semi-automatic pistol from the location he was instructed to go and fired several shots near the Israeli embassy at 2 a.m. He was later arrested. The 14-year-old wasn’t prosecuted because he was a minor. The 15-year-old was convicted of possession of a weapon and received 11 months of community service in a nursing home. The mother of the 15-year-old told the authorities that she believed her son was being exploited. She said that older people were behind his actions. They acted like “big brothers,” protecting him and supporting him while making him feel safe. In his testimony, the 15-year-old said that he thought he was being sent to deliver marijuana and he felt “cheated and angry” that he was duped into going to the embassy. He claimed that three days beforehand, he was asked if he would agree to carry out an attack at the Israeli embassy, and he refused, adding that he was unaware of where he was going that night until he was already in the Uber. In another incident, a 13-year-old boy was manipulated into firing a weapon at the Swedish branch of the Israeli Elbit Systems firm. Iran is using Sweden’s most violent gangs, Foxtrot and Rumba, to recruit minors to commit attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets for small sums of money or brand-name clothing, CNN reported on Monday. Swedish police say that the attempted attacks were among several last year targeting the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Sources in Sweden’s Security Service (SÄPO) told CNN that they were carried out by gangs operating on behalf of Iran who manipulate minors who are too young to receive a prison sentence. Last year, SÄPO warned that Iran was using the country’s crime gangs to carry out terror attacks related to the conflict with Israel. The Iranian embassy in Stockholm dismissed the claims at the time as “fake information and propaganda” by Israel. “It becomes a problem for us when another country like Iran uses these children as proxies,” Fredrik Hallström, head of the operations department at the Secret Service, told CNN, describing the Iranian attempts as “murder for hire” or “service for crimes.” Criminal networks linked to Iran have also pressured local criminals in Germany and Greece to attack Jewish targets, including a shul and a Jewish memorial center in Germany and a restaurant and a Jewish center in Greece. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)