Iran recruited a Georgian drug trafficker to assassinate an Azerbaijani rabbi as part of a plot that was foiled in January, according to a report published Saturday morning.

The Washington Post said the scheme was launched last fall when Iran’s Quds Force, the overseas arms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, met with Agil Aslanov, a prominent drug kingpin from Georgia, recruiting him to facilitate the assassination.

The Quds Force reportedly promised the would-be hitman $200,000 for killing Rabbi Shenor Segal and attacking an education center.

The newspaper said Aslanov recruited an Azerbaijani local and began surveilling the rabbi.

The plot was discovered by Azerbaijan’s security services, and Aslanov and the local accomplice were arrested in January, the report added, citing unnamed security officials from the Middle East and Western countries.

The two were charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act.

Azerbaijan’s state security service said in a statement that Aslanov “worked to collect information about a member of a religious community, and sent the location of his residence and workplace to a representative of a foreign special service agency via the appropriate mobile phone application.”

The statement did not name Segal as the target, but his identity was widely reported in the local press.

In response, Segal told The Washington Post that he’d only learned about the plot after it was reported in the media. He added that he still feels safe in Azerbaijan, despite the Iranian attempt to have him killed.

“We live here peacefully. I walk on the streets here, and there is no fear,” Segal said.

Segal is not the first rabbi to be targeted in recent months, as Rabbi Zvi Kogan, a Chabad rabbi based in the United Arab Emirates, was kidnapped and murdered late last year as part of a reported plot to transport him to Oman and keep him hostage there.

After the plan went awry, Kogan was murdered and his body was discovered days after he was reported missing.

The UAE is holding three people over the murder — Olimpi Toirovich, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim and Azizbek Kamlovich — all of them Uzbek nationals who were arrested in Turkey. The three were handed death sentences last week for their roles in the kidnapping and murder.

There were some reports that Iran was involved in that attack too, though according to Kan, Israeli officials believe that Kogan’s killing was not necessarily carried out on behalf of Tehran.

Iran is known to have targeted Israeli and Jewish targets around the world over the years as part of its efforts against the Jewish state.

In January, the Israeli National Security Council revealed that Iranian proxies attempted to lure an Israeli businessman to Dubai under the pretext of an interview.

In recent months, Israel has also uncovered a significant number of plots of Iranian proxies recruiting Israelis online to carry out espionage against Israeli figures and facilities.

Since September 2024, Israeli authorities have announced arrests in many cases involving individuals or cells suspected of spying or plotting attacks on behalf of Iran. In some, Tehran tried to trick Israelis online into carrying out missions for it. In other cases, individuals are alleged to have knowingly operated on Tehran’s behalf for money.