The Pasdaran, Islamists, the KGB and misogynistic groups: the many forces behind the hybrid war against Italia and Europe

The text is almost identical. Only the signature has changed. The email that triggered a bomb scare in 6,000 Italian schools yesterday morning is, in many respects, a repeat of the one sent on 2 November to 271 schools. But behind the same threats lie two identities that could not be more different: back then, the Iranian Pasdaran; yesterday, a self-styled leader with a Russian surname – the same as that of a former KGB chief.

It is in this arena – where identities multiply and claims become blurred – that the security agencies of the AISI and the AISE, the National Cybersecurity Agency and the judicial police, from the Postal Police to the DIGOS, are operating. Who is behind the emails that are causing alarm across the country? There is no clear answer as yet. The most likely lead remains the Russian one, as Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani pointed out when referring to actions originating from the East. But in hybrid warfare, intelligence analysts believe, pinpointing the perpetrator is extremely difficult, all the more so when cyber-attacks from China, North Korea and Iran also overlap and intermingle in their targeting of the West. This is illustrated by the case of the supermarket fridges and the blood bank in France: Paris attributes the attacks to Tehran, whilst in Italia, similar actions have been claimed and attributed to pro-Russian hackers. The same technique, two apparently different sources. Not necessarily a common hand behind them.

The pattern also emerges from the emails. The one dated 11 November, signed ‘Mikhail Andropov’, and the one dated 2 November, attributed to the ‘Iranian Pasdaran’, follow virtually the same script: explosives hidden in a plastic bag, a remote-controlled detonator, and survivors to be ‘stabbed to death’. Even the word introducing this latest threat is identical: ‘After that’. The new message adds ‘genocide against Italians’ and a bomb in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s car. Same words, different signatures. A single perpetrator changing identities? Or an imitation designed to throw the investigation off the scent?

And the signatures tell an even more intricate story. ‘Mikhail Andropov’ had already appeared on 6 November in the threats sent to the Irish public broadcaster RTE and the Bulgarian broadcaster Nova TV. He presented himself as one of the leaders of the group responsible for the false bomb threats on European flights. The very same alerts which, on 5 November – at least at Italian airports – bore the signature of the ‘Fighters of the Masculine State’, an acronym referring to a Russian misogynist movement. And Andropov is not just any surname: Yuri Andropov headed the KGB before rising to the top of the Soviet Union. The subject line of the emails sent to television stations, ‘Message to the West’, also refers to him, echoing the title of a biography of his published in the United States in 1983.

But the Russian, misogynistic one is not the only guise. In the preceding weeks, threats against schools had taken on another form: Islamist. On 19 October, at least fifty Italian schools received an email with the subject line ‘Death is near’. The email address mimicked that of the Saudi Ministry of Education, and the message announced attacks ‘with Allah’s permission’. At the same time, similar threats reached hundreds of schools in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Serbia, as well as some newsrooms in Hungary. Then, on 2 November, an email arrived that was almost identical to yesterday’s, but signed by the ‘Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’, the Iranian Pasdaran. Now the references are becoming even more mixed. In yesterday’s email, Andropov appears to be wearing both masks and proclaims himself leader of the ‘Vilayat of Misoginistan’. ‘Vilayat’ is the term used by Islamic State to refer to its own provinces. ‘Misoginistan’, the ‘land of misogynists’, on the other hand, evokes the ‘Male State’ and the radical Russian group. The result is a signature that blends Islamist references with Russian misogyny.