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(SeaPRwire) –   According to reports, the New IRA — a dangerous dissident republican organization purported to have ties to Iran and Hezbollah — claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a car bomb outside a Belfast police station, before issuing warnings of additional attacks.

The explosion targeted a Police Service of Northern Ireland station in Dunmurry, and law enforcement stepped up patrols after the group threatened to target officers at their private residences.

Per a Reuters report, a 66-year-old man was also taken into custody on Tuesday under anti-terrorism legislation following the blast.

In a statement attributed to the “leadership of the IRA,” the group said the bomb was intended to kill officers exiting the station. It warned that anyone cooperating with police “will be severely dealt with.”

A 2020 report from The Times, which cited information provided by an MI5 informant, alleged that connections exist between the New IRA, Lebanon-headquartered Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The report noted that individuals linked to the New IRA signed a condolence book after the 2020 killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad, a development that sparked concerns over possible external support for the group, including weapons and funding.

“The New IRA–Hezbollah link is a useful data point in a much larger pattern: the operationalization of the so-called axis of resistance,” Andrew Badger, a former Defense Department intelligence officer, told Digital.

“This joins Russia, Iran, China, North Korea and an expanding bench of aligned non-state actors into a working logistical and tradecraft network across the globe,” Badger stated.

“What we are watching is the maturing of a hybrid warfare model, pioneered and led by Russia and Iran, in which adversaries of the Western-led order increasingly share tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) across geographies and ideologies,” said Badger, who co-authored the book “The Great Heist.”

The New IRA’s most recent bombing also comes just weeks after a similar attempted car bomb attack on another police station on the outskirts of Belfast. It is one of several militant groups that oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and seek to end British rule in Northern Ireland to establish a united Ireland.

It has launched a series of attacks targeting police and security forces in recent years.

“The real challenge for local Irish police and security services is that these groups now compound each other’s learning,” Badger further noted.

“A tactic battle-tested in one theater can be in the hands of a dissident cell in another within months, and Western counter-terror structures simply aren’t wired to track that kind of cross-pollination,” he explained.

“A Lebanese Shia militia training a hard-left Irish republican faction would have looked exotic 10 years ago.

“Today, it is consistent with a wider pipeline including Russian sabotage cells using local criminal proxies in Europe and Iranian-directed assassination plots on U.K. and U.S. soil.

“The playbook of these actors — proxies, dual-use logistics, weapons-and-finance pipelines, exploitation of grievance movements in the target country — appear to be converging,” Badger further added.