The threat posed by Iran in the UK has ‘significantly increased’, with Iranian spies behind more than a dozen attempts to kill or kidnap British-based individuals since 2022, parliament’s intelligence watchdog warned Thursday.
The UK government’s response has been too focused on ‘crisis management’ while concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme have overly dominated, the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament also concluded.
Its report comes amid growing alarm in Britain at alleged Iranian targeting of dissidents, media organisations and journalists in the UK, which has included accusations of physical attacks.
Iran in March became the first country to be placed on an enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which aims to boost Britain’s national security against covert foreign influences.
‘Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals, and UK interests,’ Kevan Jones, chairman of the watchdog committee, said in the report’s conclusions.
‘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.’
Jones noted it bolsters this through proxy groups, ‘including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organisations, and private cyber actors’ to allow for deniability.
His committee said in its report that while Iran’s UK activity ‘appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China’, it ‘should not be underestimated’.
It noted the physical threat posed had ‘significantly increased’ in pace and volume, and was ‘focused acutely on dissidents and other opponents of the regime’ as well as Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.
‘The Iranian Intelligence Services have shown that they are willing and able — often through third-party agents — to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK,’ the report said.
‘There have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022.’
The committee took evidence for two years from August 2022 for its report, a period which saw Tehran implicated in a plot to kill two London-based Iran International television anchors.
In March last year one of the Persian-language outlet’s journalists was stabbed outside his London home.
Two Romanian men have been charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and wounding and face extradition to the UK to stand trial.
The counter terrorism unit of London’s Metropolitan Police led the investigation. Iran’s charge d’affaires in the UK has said that the Tehran authorities ‘deny any link’ to the incident.
