An official report warned that Iran was targeting dissidents and gathering intelligence on Jewish and Israeli targets in Britain.
Britain faces a rising threat from Iranian espionage and assassination squads, a parliamentary intelligence committee said on Thursday, in a report that also warned of a growing risk from Iran to Jewish and Israeli targets on British soil.
The Intelligence and Security Committee is made up of nine elected and unelected members of Parliament, and scrutinizes the work of Britain’s secret services. It has access to senior figures in the intelligence world and to classified information.
The report published Thursday, based on two years of interviews with British intelligence officers and classified documents, described a sharp increase in the physical threat posed to Iranian dissidents living in Britain. It said there had been at least 15 attempts to murder or kidnap British nationals or individuals based in Britain since the beginning of 2022.
The committee finished taking evidence on the Iranian threat in 2023 but even then — before tensions heightened to their current level in the Middle East — it identified an increased risk to some Jewish and Israeli organizations in Britain. MI5 was quoted in the report as saying this was particularly the case “where those individuals or targets are seen as undermining the Iranian regime.”
The report said that Iran did not view attacks on Iranian dissidents, and Jewish and Israeli targets in Britain as attacks on Britain. “It rather sees the U.K. as collateral in its handling of internal matters,” the report said. “We encourage the government and its international partners to make it clear to Iran — at every opportunity — that such attacks would indeed constitute an attack on the U.K. and would receive the appropriate response.”
