Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi was already in federal custody in May 2026 when he was first charged with planning 18 terrorist attacks across Europe. By August, he was directing an attack on a British RAF base using coded messages — from his prison cell.
The FBI stopped that one in September. Al-Saadi kept planning.
On Tuesday, an eight-count superseding indictment was unsealed in New York charging al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, alongside Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national, and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national, with supporting two designated foreign terrorist organizations: Kata'ib Hizballah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The charges cover approximately 20 terrorist attacks and attempted attacks spanning Europe and the United States, as reported by Just the News.
The scope is not abstract. Among the plots: a thwarted attack on a Manhattan synagogue. A near-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London. And the September 2026 plot against the RAF base that al-Saadi allegedly coordinated through a network of overseas associates while sitting in a federal detention facility.
Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't leave room for interpretation. "Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government," Blanche said. "This Department of Justice will continue dismantling terrorist networks and protecting the American people from terrorist organizations."
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald of the Southern District of New York, whose office is leading the prosecution, put a finer point on it. "The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real," McDonald said. "Even after one of their co-conspirators was arrested and placed in federal custody, the defendants allegedly continued coordinating terrorist activity through coded communications and a network of associates overseas."
That last part deserves a second read. Federal arrest didn't stop the operation. An American prison cell became a command post. The network kept running because the network extends well beyond three men in a courtroom — it runs through Tehran, through Kata'ib Hizballah's infrastructure, through the IRGC's global apparatus.
This indictment lands while Iran has issued credible threats against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — threats serious enough to move a sitting Cabinet member to a military base for security. The pattern is Iranian operatives planning attacks on American and allied soil, Iranian-backed organizations targeting Jewish communities in Western cities, and Iranian state actors threatening senior U.S. officials. That's not saber-rattling from the other side of the world. That's an operational tempo.
The FBI's New York Joint Terrorism Task Force ran the investigation. The Southern District of New York brought the charges. The Attorney General made the public statement. Every piece of the federal law enforcement apparatus moved in the same direction on this one, and the message from the DOJ was as clear as the indictment itself.
Twenty planned attacks. Three defendants. One of them running operations from a cell. And the government that caught it is the same one Iran is threatening.
The indictment is eight counts. The answer is all of them.
