Global calls from Iran directly triggered two Belgian terror attacks, according to Gert Vercauteren, head of the country's Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA), who confirmed the international link on Thursday.
Speaking to Francophone broadcaster RTBF, the security chief stated that perpetrators "certainly" acted on Tehran's orders to strike Jewish locations worldwide.
In March, explosives were detonated outside a Liège synagogue. In that same week, arsonists completely torched a car in the middle of Antwerp's Jewish quarter. There were no casualties in either attack.
Now, however, Vercauteren stressed that the attacks formed part of a coordinated campaign rather than isolated vandalism.
Belgian authorities faced an immediate escalation in security threats following the outbreak of Israel's war in Gaza. Tensions then boiled over in early spring.
An explosive device was detonated on Liège's Rue Léon Frédéricq shortly before 04:00 on 9 March. This sudden blast shattered the quiet of the provincial city.
Federal magistrates instantly took charge. Investigators from the Federal Prosecutor's Office launched a formal terrorism investigation within hours of the explosion.
Security services had just observed a normalisation in general threat reports before these geopolitical developments shifted the domestic landscape again. He noted that the March strikes represented the peak of Iranian-directed action inside the country.
Cross-border links complicate the ongoing investigation: Belgian incidents coincided with a string of plots in the Netherlands. Intelligence agencies disrupted several simultaneous operations. One such aborted plot involved a planned bombing of a synagogue in the Dutch town of Heemstede.
Belgium's national terror threat level sits firmly at three out of a maximum four. This "serious" rating has remained continuously active since a fatal shooting in Brussels left two Swedish football fans dead in October 2023.
CUTA relies on constant intelligence inputs to evaluate radicalism across the population.
An arrest in Turkey recently dismantled a key node in this specific network. International authorities detained one of the main suspects responsible for orchestrating the continental attacks. Belgian security forces have not recorded any subsequent strikes since that targeted intervention.
