Iran Turns to Criminal Gangs to Attack Its Enemies in the West
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Georgia's hand-count ballot rule is blocked in court as voters in the state flock to the polls. Plus, economists grow more upbeat about the U.S. economy. And we'll look at Tehran's use of criminal gangs in the West to target its enemies. This model of using proxies to go after Israeli targets, which is done in the past in the Middle East, Iran is really exporting that model now to Europe as well.

It's Wednesday, October 16th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

A judge in Georgia has blocked a new rule that would have required poll workers in the state to hand-count ballots after machine tallies, saying the rule was enacted too close to the election. That rule, which was passed last month by Georgia's majority Republican state election board, would have added a lengthy delay before results could be released on Election Day and was challenged by Democrats in court.

Georgia law already requires election officials to compare the number of votes and ballot tallies. Well, that ruling was handed down as a record number of Georgia voters have already gone to the polls. More than 300,000 people cast ballots yesterday after early voting began statewide, topping a previous record of 136,000 first-day early ballots set in 2020.

Georgia is seen as winnable by both political parties, though Vice President Kamala Harris held a narrow lead there over Donald Trump in a recent journal poll of swing state voters. Meanwhile, Elon Musk says he is planning to give a series of talks throughout swing state Pennsylvania beginning today. Attendees are required to have signed a petition being circulated by Musk's pro-Trump super PAC and have voted already in the election.

His announcement comes as federal filings show the Tesla CEO poured $75 million into that super PAC in the three months through September. Musk founded America PAC in the spring, with a focus on helping register swing state voters and get them to the polls for Trump. And for continuing election updates, we've launched a new Wall Street Journal election live blog. To check it out, head to WSJ.com.

And with less than three weeks to go before Election Day, a new journal survey shows that economists have grown more upbeat about the U.S. economy and the cooling path of inflation. Forecasters polled earlier this month are now predicting faster growth for the rest of the year compared with their expectations three months ago.

Paul Hannan is the economics editor for Dow Jones Newswires. The big takeaway is that the economy does appear to be heading for what's called a soft landing. So that means that surge in inflation that we saw has been tamed without doing too much damage to growth or the jobs market.

Looking at the jobs market, these economists now think that the unemployment rate will be about 4.2% by the end of this year. That's not a big deterioration in the jobs market by any stretch of the imagination. They also expect the Fed to continue lowering interest rates this year, maybe another two moves, but smaller moves, a quarter point each. And that should set up the economy for a decent period of continued growth.

Carmaker Stellantis has seen deliveries fall by a fifth in the third quarter. The drop came as the maker of Jeep and Ram worked to clear excess stock in the U.S. and contended with delays to new model launches. In North America, quarterly deliveries fell 36 percent. Meanwhile, we are exclusively reporting that Stellantis is expanding its factory complex in northern Mexico to build its best-selling Ram 1500 pickup truck.

The plans come about a year after the company's landmark labor deal with the United Auto Workers, which gave union members a substantial pay rise and promised U.S. investments. Stellantis said yesterday that the Ram trucks would continue to be made at its plant north of Detroit and that no other announcements have been made on this. Stellantis shares are down more than 40 percent year-to-date as it battles tumbling profit and a slide in its U.S. market share.

And in other markets news today, shares of Louis Vuitton owner LVMH are slumping after it reported lower third quarter sales that missed market estimates. The luxury company is contending with lower growth in Japan, weak demand from Chinese consumers, and a drop in revenue for its wine and spirits business. Other European luxury stocks have also been dragged lower this morning.

British markets are moving higher on the heels of lower-than-expected UK inflation data that's raising the likelihood of a rate cut next month. And investors this morning are on the lookout for an increase in investment banking revenue at Morgan Stanley. Its results are due at 7.30 a.m. Eastern, with updates from U.S. Bancor and Abbott Laboratories also due before the start of trading.

Coming up, Iran turns to criminal gangs in the West to target its enemies. That story after the break.

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No product can be absolutely secure. Become an IT hero at intel.com slash IT heroes. To target Israeli interests, Iran is turning to criminal gangs in the West. Reporting by journal correspondent Suna Rasmussen is shedding new light on Tehran's efforts to strike back against its overseas enemies without sparking a regional war. And Suna joins me now with more.

Suna, Iran has long used militias around the Middle East to carry out attacks on its behalf. We talk about that on the show pretty regularly, but we are talking here about groups that are in Europe, in places like Spain, Sweden, Denmark. It seems like a real evolution in tactics. Tell us what you've been learning. In recent years, and especially over the past six months or so, coinciding with the war in Gaza and southern Lebanon, Iran has been allying with organized criminal groups in Europe,

to conduct, this is according to authorities in these countries, but also Israeli intelligence, to conduct these attacks where young criminals have been caught throwing hand grenades at Israeli embassies in Denmark or Sweden. Last year, there was a Spanish opposition politician who was shot in the face. He was known for supporting the

an Iranian dissident group. So this is really like this model of using proxies to go after Israeli targets, which is done in the past in the Middle East. Iran is really exporting that model now to Europe as well. They deny this, right? Yes, Iran firmly denies that it's behind any of these plots and say that they are false allegations by Israeli intelligence. And yet you report that Russia has also embraced this concept of...

allegedly using low-level criminals to carry out attacks on dissidents and others. I mean, in terms of why this tactic holds appeal, is it just that, for instance, unlike talking to a terrorist or someone who might be on a watch list and trying to coordinate with them from afar, these criminals just aren't being monitored? Or what are some of the other reasons we might be seeing this trend? The relatively open borders in Europe definitely help citizens, among them criminals, to move from country to country relatively undetected. And

And organized crime has been growing in Europe in the past decade and is really on its own posing a serious security challenge for European authorities. And it's really quite ripe for foreign regimes, whether Iran, Russia or other countries to tap into.

British intelligence also recently emphasized this threat and said that both Iran and Russia increasingly were using criminals on British soil to conduct violent plots. The appeal of this method to Iran is that while it's increasingly difficult for Iran and its allies to strike back at Israel in the Middle East,

These targets in Europe are relatively unprotected. The criminals that are used for these plots are cheap and easy to hire. Sometimes they likely don't even know who they're working for. A 14-year-old boy in Sweden might not know that he's working on behalf of Iran because Iran is using middlemen to hire these criminals.

And it also inserts a layer of plausible deniability, according to European authorities and experts who watch this stuff, just as using militias in the Middle East does. And we should note, we're talking about Europe here, but plots, it seems, have even spread to the United States. Yes, American authorities have in several instances arrested people who the FBI and the Justice Department say have links to Iran or

for attempting violent plots and even assassinations against Iranian dissidents and former U.S. officials on American soil. I mean, it sounds like there's some pretty big security vulnerabilities here that Iran may be exploiting, which begs the question, is there really a way to try and stop this? And if not, what could the broader impact be? This really presents a serious challenge for European or Western law enforcement and for counterterrorism agencies today.

But we've seen the British intelligence chief last week

issue a stern warning to these organized groups saying that if you are conducting violent plots on behalf of foreign powers, you will not only face law enforcement agencies as you have hitherto, you'll also face the full wrath of our counterterrorism units. So that's one way European governments are trying to push back against this, simply by deterring criminal gangs on European soil from working on behalf of foreign powers. But it does present a new and difficult challenge for European authorities.

Journal correspondent Suna Rasmussen, thanks so much. Thank you. And that's it for What's News for Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bullivant with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

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