Latest news with #IranianDissidents
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Iran's threat to UK on a par with Russia's, security report finds
Iran's intimidation, including the fear of physical attack and assassination of Iranian dissidents living in the UK, is comparable in scale to the threat posed by Russia, parliament's intelligence and security committee has found. In a report published on Thursday, the committee (ISC) adds that the UK is a priority espionage target for Iranian cyber-attacks, ranking just below the US and Saudi Arabia. The committee concludes those undertaking the cyber-attacks range from state-controlled actors responding to direct tasking to private actors working for personal gain or perceived state intelligence requirements. It warns that the UK's petrochemical utilities and finance sectors remain vulnerable to an Iranian attack. The committee's two years of evidence-taking ended in August 2023 so predates the arrest of five Iranians in May suspected of preparing a terrorist incident. The rapid rise in threats to Iranian dissidents living in the UK, many working for Persian TV channels beaming into Iran, coincided with the full coverage of the anti-government protests prompted by the death of Mahsa Amini in Iranian police custody in September 2022, the Home Office told the committee. There has also been an increase in threats against Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.' British intelligence officials have told the committee that agents affiliated with Tehran have shown their readiness to 'carry out assassinations within the UK and kidnap people from the country'. The report does not cover the impact within the UK of the Israeli attacks on Iranian installations, or the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023. A perennial feature of the reports from the ISC is the long delay between the completion of reports and their publication following discussion with the government. In these discussions, the prime minister confirms there is no information that would be damaging to national security but he cannot change the report itself. But the report will feed into the full government response to the review conducted by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, into a new proscription mechanism surrounding state-sponsored terrorism. The Cabinet Office welcomed the report The Iranian embassy in London said: 'The suggestion that Iran engages in or supports acts of physical violence, espionage, or cyber-aggression on British soil or against British interests abroad, is wholly rejected. 'Such accusations are not only defamatory but also dangerous, fuelling unnecessary tensions and undermining diplomatic norms.' In March, the security minister, Dan Jarvis, announced that Iran, including the whole of the Iranian state – covering Iran's intelligence services, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and ministry of intelligence – was being placed on the enhanced tier of the new foreign influence registration scheme, meaning those who are directed by Iran to conduct activities in the UK including criminal proxies – must register that activity, whatever it is, or face five years in prison. The ISC, a group of senior parliamentarians given unique access to the top echelons of the intelligence services and secret documents, criticises government policy on Iran as 'one of crisis management driven by concerns over Iran's nuclear programme to the exclusion of other issues'. Firefighting, it says, 'has prevented the government from carrying out longer-term thinking'. The committee cites evidence of over-bureaucratic structures within Whitehall and a lack of expertise. One witness told the committee: 'If you have people running policy in the Foreign Office who don't speak a word of Persian then that is a fat lot of good to be honest.' The committee found the government was paralysed on the issue of legal and practical difficulties around proscription of a state organisation such as the IRGC. It says 'given that membership of an organisation proscribed in the UK could lead to the arrest and prosecution, and custodial sentence which would apply to around a quarter if the Iranian cabinet'. The committee portrays Iran as a pragmatic actor focused on regime survival, driven more by opportunism than ideology. Seeking to avoid full-scale war, it has focused on development of asymmetric capabilities and a network of aligned militant and terrorist organisations across the Middle East to spread influence and deter potential aggressors. The director general of MI5 recently stated that since the start of 2022 the UK had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots, presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents. In his March statement, Jarvis said: 'The Iranian regime is targeting dissidents and media organisations and journalists reporting on the violent oppression of the regime. 'It is also no secret that there is a longstanding pattern of targeting Jewish and Israeli people internationally by the Iranian intelligence services. It is clear that these plots are a conscious strategy of the Iranian regime to stifle criticism through intimidation and fear.' Kevan Jones, who is also known as Lord Beamish and is chair of the ISC, said Iran posed a 'wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals, and UK interests', adding: 'Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and its intelligence services are ferociously well-resourced. 'It supplements this with its use of proxy groups – including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organisations, and private cyber actors – to provide it with a deniable means of attacking its adversaries with minimal risk of retaliation.'
Washington Post
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
UK faces 'persistent and unpredictable threat' from Iran, intelligence report warns
LONDON — A U.K. intelligence committee said Thursday that Iran has significantly increased its physical threat to people on British soil since 2022. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said Thursday that the danger posed to Iranian dissidents and Jewish and Israeli interests was on par with the threat from Russia.
The Sun
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Iran poses ‘significant threat to Britain' with Tehran's spies targeting UK as a priority, report finds
IRAN poses a significant threat to Britain with Tehran's spies targeting the UK as a priority, a new report has found. The Islamic Republic is capable of 'wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable' attacks on our country, according to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. 3 3 3 Assassination attempts are mainly directed at dissidents living on UK soil with the Director General of MI5 Sir Ken McCallum revealing that their operations are built around 'regime survival, dissidents and media organisations'. They will go after anyone they perceive as 'being problematic for the regime'. Potential targets listed in the report include Iranian dissidents, journalists, individuals convicted of terror offences in Iran, activists, former government employees, environmentalists, refugees, university students, and employees at international non-governmental organisations. British civil servants have had their personal email addresses targeted by Iranian cyber security attacks in an attempt to find out information about the UK government. Any calls made to and from Iran are believed to be intercepted by their security services to 'support espionage operations'. Sir Ken revealed that Iranians are attempting to recruit junior people who don't currently have access to privileged information in Government but might one day. He said: 'They are patient and up for trying to do … seeding type of operations where they cultivate people who might be a bit more naive, or early in their careers with a view to then becoming longer-term assets.' MI5 has also seen that Israeli or Jewish entities in the UK have been the target of potential attacks. Iranian intelligence services are 'willing and able' to try to assassinate targets in the UK, with at least 15 murder or kidnap attempts from the beginning of 2022 to August 2023. In May three alleged Iranian spies - two of which came to the UK on a small boat - were charged with targeting UK-based journalists so that "serious violence" could be inflicted on them. Iran claims it could assassinate Trump 'while he sunbathes at Mar-a-Lago' amid alert over terrorist sleeper cells in US Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, are thought to have targeted people working at Iran International, an independent media organisation based in London. The 246-page report by the Intelligence and Security Committee stopped taking evidence back in August 2023 - so does not consider the October 7 attacks by Hamas or any more recent threats to the UK by Iranian state actors. It has also found that Iran's nuclear weapons programme would 'pose a threat to UK nationals in the region and to the UK mainland' if it was allowed to grow. As of August 2023, the committee said that Iran had not yet developed a nuclear weapons programme or taken a decision to produce one. In June of this year Donald Trump launched a blitz on Iran's nuclear sites when he sent a dozen bunker buster bombs to target the mountain-fortress Fordow. UN's top nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has since warned that Iran could start enriching uranium again within months. Tehran admitted that the US and joint Israeli operations caused 'excessive and serious damage'. Iran is said to want to build a 'deep alliance' with Vladimir Putin's Russia despite a 'legacy of distrust and suspicion'. 'IRAN POSES AN UNPREDICTABLE THREAT TO THE UK' The Chairman of the ISC, The Rt Hon. the Lord Beamish PC, said: "Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals, and UK interests. 'Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and its intelligence services are ferociously well-resourced with significant areas of asymmetric strength. 'It supplements this with its use of proxy groups - including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organisations, and private cyber actors - to provide it with a deniable means of attacking its adversaries with minimal risk of retaliation. 'As the Committee was told, Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with.' The report highlights that there has been a 'sharp increase' in the threat of physical attacks posed to dissidents and other opponents of the regime on UK soil. Iran has a 'willingness to use assassination as an instrument of state policy'. He added: 'We remain concerned that the Government's policy on Iran has suffered from a focus on crisis management and has been primarily driven by concerns over Iran's nuclear programme - to the exclusion of other issues. ''Fire-fighting' has prevented the Government from developing a real understanding of Iran, with a lack of Iran-specific expertise across Government. 'As with our previous Inquiries into China and Russia, governance structures are over-complicated - with the attendant risk of too much talking at the expense of action. The Government must move on: the national security threat from Iran requires a longer-term view, and resourcing must be consistent with that threat."
Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Threat from Iran has increased 'significantly' and is now 'comparable with Russia', Brits are warned
The threat of physical attacks by Iran on people living in the UK has increased 'significantly' and is now comparable with Russia, a watchdog warned today. In a new report, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee described the threat from Iran as 'persistent' and 'unpredictable'. The committee found the 'physical threat' from Iran had 'significantly increased', focused on Iranian dissidents and Jewish and Israeli interests. It also warned that the nuclear threat from Iran had increased since the US withdrew from a key international agreement in 2018, arguing that de-escalation 'must be a priority'. The report from the nine-member committee, which scrutinises the work of Britain's intelligence agencies, only covers the period up to August 2023 and publication was delayed by last year's election. Between the beginning of 2022 and the end of the committee's evidence-gathering in August 2023, the report found there had been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK residents. The committee urged the Government to make clear to Tehran that such attempts would ' constitute an attack on the UK and would receive the appropriate response '. Committee chairman Lord Beamish said: 'Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests '. Describing Iran's 'high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity', he added: 'As the committee was told, Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with.' The shocking scale of this threat was made clear last year by MI5 director general Ken McCallum, who said spies and police had identified 20 credible Iranian plots to kill or kidnap people in the UK since 2022. They consisted attempts to assassinate or kidnap dissidents and journalists, with a focus on Iranian nationals rather than the general public. But Mr McCallum warned that Iran could ' repurpose' its criminal network to attack Britons if the conflict in the Middle East escalates. Last month, counterterrorism police arrested five Iranians who had allegedly been plotting to attack the Israeli embassy. They were later released. Meanwhile, Britain's Jewish community has been urged to be on heightened alert amid fears of terrorist 'revenge' attacks. In March of last year, Iranian-British journalist Pouria Zeraati was stabbed four times outside his Wimbledon home. The attack was allegedly carried out by Eastern European gangsters hired by the Iranians - who were able to flee the country just hours later. It came shortly after Britain imposed new sanctions on members of an IRGC unit that had tried to assassinate two presenters of Iran International, a UK-based TV channel that is critical of the Tehran regime. Iran International TV said it had 'reluctantly' decided to close its London studios in response to advice from the Met Police. As well as being linked to alleged terror plots, Iranian forces have also tried to recruit spies in the British military. Among them includes Daniel Khalife - a 'hapless' young soldier who was jailed in February for 14 years and three months for espionage. The 23-year-old was caught spying for Iran before then fleeing prison by clinging to the bottom of a food truck - before again being caught by the authorities. He claimed to have been on a one-man 'double agent' mission but was labelled an 'attention seeker' by a judge when he was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court in London. Judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Khalife - who was ignored when he contacted MI6 and MI5 in his attempts to become a double agent - had been motivated by 'a selfish desire to show off' and described him as 'a dangerous fool'. While acting as a spy, Khalife 'exposed military personnel to serious harm' by collecting sensitive information and passing it to agents of Iran. He was paid in cash and told handlers he would stay in the military for 25-plus years for them. In September 2023, Khalife escaped from category B prison HMP Wandsworth in South West London by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck. He was caught on a canal towpath by a plainclothes detective days later after a major search. Prosecutors in his trial said Khalife played 'a cynical game', claiming he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British intelligence services, when in fact he gathered 'a very large body of restricted and classified material'. Khalife was sentenced to six years for committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, and another six years - consisting of five years in prison and one on licence - for eliciting information about members of the armed forces. The judge also passed a sentence of two years and three months for the jail break. Last November, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court found that Khalife had breached the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act. He was cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax and had already admitted during his trial to escaping from Wandsworth prison. Last November, sources revealed to the Mail how the German-Iranian leader of a Hells Angels biker gang had allegedly been recruited by Iran to carry out terror attacks. Ramin Yektaparast, a brutal thug and unashamed anti-Semite with a tattoo of Adolf Hitler on his arm, is suspected of numerous crimes, including planning attacks on synagogues in Germany in November 2022. The raids reportedly saw shots being fired and a Molotov cocktail thrown at synagogues in the cities of Essen and Bochum.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Iran's threat to UK on a par with Russia's, security report finds
Iran's intimidation, including the threat of physical attack and assassination of Iranian dissidents living in the UK, is the single greatest threat from Iran and comparable in scale to the threat posed by Russia, parliament's intelligence and security committee has found. In a report published on Thursday, it also finds that the UK is a priority espionage target for Iranian cyber-attacks, ranking just below the US and Saudi Arabia. The committee concludes those undertaking the cyber-attacks range from state-controlled actors responding to direct tasking to private actors working for personal gain or perceived state intelligence requirements. It warns that UK petrochemical utilities and finance sectors remain vulnerable to a potential Iranian attack. The committee's two years of evidence-taking ended in August 2023 so predates the arrest of five Iranians in May suspected of preparing a terrorist incident. More details soon …
