IRAN HAS reached its ‘greatest level of threat’ to Britain, comparable to the threat posed by Russia, the Home Office’s Homeland Security Group testified to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee last year. The committee revealed this testimony on Thursday in a report which has been nearly four years in the making.
The Committee reports that Iran has attempted to kill or kidnap in Britain at least 15 times since 2022.
Why was this revelation not released earlier? Iranian plots are threats to public safety. Even if the intelligence agencies or law enforcers privately warn the targets, the public is still at risk, if only collaterally. Remember: the only death from Russia’s attempt to assassinate the defected Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018, was an unrelated British woman who inadvertently sprayed the nerve agent (Novichuk) on herself from a perfume bottle that the attackers had discarded miles from Salisbury. Dozens of other Britons were sickened by contamination.
A second question: Why was the Parliamentary revelation released after journalistic revelations of similar information? In June, UnHerd reported that at least 20 Iranian terrorist plots have been detected on British soil over the past three years. An obvious question: Why the discrepancy between 15 attacks, according to the committee, and 20 attacks, according to Unherd? Time scope is not the explanation. The committee reported 15 attacks in the last four years. Unherd reported 20 in the last three years.
Surely the latter datum was leaked from the government, or the committee. The motivations of the leaker are less clear. Perhaps the agent wanted to force politicians to confirm the Iranian threats. Perhaps the agent is a partisan opponent of the current administration (although the information embarrasses prior administrations too).
Perhaps the agent is an opponent of the rampant abuse of asylum claims. Most of the UnHerd article on Iran is about Iranian refugees assisting with Iranian espionage, terrorism and covert actions inside Britain.
These actions are espionage if the agents are collecting information they are not entitled to. This information does not need to be a state secret to code as espionage. Information identifying where a dissident lives is privileged, and potentially deadly to the dissident.
The actions count as terrorism if they are meant to terrorise a wider audience (such as any dissidents considering defection to Britain).
The actions count as covert actions if Iran intends to leave no evidence of its involvement. Using asylum-seekers (and organised criminals) to front the action helps the organisers to escape detection.
Most of the targets are prominent Jews and Iranian opposition journalists. But the worry now is that the same capacities could be used to target British politicians who support Israeli and US confrontation with Iran, such as the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
Perhaps Iran has already targeted British politicians. For instance, the arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s private home and a car have resulted in the indictments of two Ukrainians and a Romanian, but I am told that the organisers are employed by the governments of Russia and Iran.
According to Unherd’s sources, Iranian diplomats in London are bribing Iranian refugees with trips to see their relatives in Iran, in violation of UK immigration rules, and in obvious contradiction of their claims to need asylum from the same regime with which they are now co-operating. In return, the diplomats blackmail the refugees into helping with espionage and covert actions inside Britain.
Why was this revelation of Iranian covert actions inside Britain not released by the government, instead of a parliamentary committee? Why was it not released years ago?
I suspect that the government feared the implications for three particular failures of government: open borders, illegitimate asylum claims, and undocumented traveller exits from Britain.
For decades, Britain’s government, under many different administrations, has denied the possibility of bad actors taking advantage of open borders, easy asylum claims (Iranians can claim homosexuality, which is practically unfalsifiable, as justification for asylum), and undocumented exits.
In fact, Syrian terrorists take advantage, as do Pakistani child rapists, Russian assassins, and Iranian anti-Semites and dissident-hunters.
Progressive policies are bad for public safety. Yet the government is still hiding the risks.
