Dutch ramp up security for Iranian dissidents after near-fatal shooting

Dutch authorities are tightening security for critics of the Iranian regime after a man was shot earlier this week. 

The 36-year-old man of Iranian descent was hospitalized with serious injuries on Thursday after being targeted in public in his home city of Schoonhoven. The shooter remains at large. 

“Because of his Iranian background and because of the tensions in the world right now, I’ve ordered an assessment of whether this means something for the safety of other Iranian dissidents in the Netherlands,” Justice and Security Minister David van Weel told journalists on Friday. 

“And where needed, we’ve taken additional measures.” 

Van Weel added it is still unknown whether the man was specifically targeted because of his Iranian roots.

“But the fact that he is Iranian and spoke out against the regime is something to be taken seriously.” 

Dutch media reported that the victim had shared criticism of the regime in Tehran with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and Telegram and had recently expressed his support for the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. 

In one post, he thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported.

Thursday’s shooting has sent a “chilling shudder” through the Iranian diaspora in the Netherlands, Dutch parliamentarian Ulysse Ellian wrote in a reaction on X. “I know what the long arm of the mullahs in Tehran is capable of,” he added. 

According to the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD, there are “strong indications” that Iran was behind the murders of two Dutch citizens of Iranian origin in 2015 and 2017.

Speaking to parliament earlier this week, Van Weel said the “possibility that Iran was involved” in a separate incident — an explosion outside a synagogue in Rotterdam earlier this month — was still being investigated. 

But he said “everything” pointed to the fact that the four teens aged between 17 and 19 who have been detained in connection with the case were acting on outside orders.