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The UK parliament’s intelligence and security committee has warned that Iran poses a “persistent and unpredictable” risk to Britain, highlighting the threat from Tehran towards UK-based dissidents and Jewish people.
The Iran security report, whose publication was delayed due to last year’s general election, called on the British government to strengthen measures to counter Tehran’s influence.
“Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests,” said Lord Beamish, chair of the committee.
“We highlight in particular our concern at the sharp increase in the physical threat posed to dissidents and other opponents of the regime who are in the UK — given Iran’s willingness to use blockblockination as an instrument of state policy,” he added.
The report said that since the beginning of 2022 there had been a “significant increase” in Iranian threats to people living in the UK, including “15 attempts at murder or kidnappings against British nationals or UK-based individuals”.
“This threat is focused acutely on dissidents and other opponents of the regime. There is also an increased threat against Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK,” according to the report, which said many of the attacks were carried out through “third party agents”.
“Iran does not view attacks on dissident, Jewish and Israeli targets in the UK as attacks on the UK,” 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 UK and would receive the appropriate response,” it added.
Conservative MP Jeremy Wright, a former attorney-general and co-author of the report, said the UK needed to clearly communicate to Iran as a “deterrent” and to demonstrate that “we do take it very seriously”.
“Precisely what grade of response will depend on what calculation the government makes about the particular Iranian action, but there are options and we think it’s important Iran gets that clear message,” he said.
Lord Beamish told the Financial Times that Iran’s “risk appetite” appeared to have increased, saying the country posed a “real threat”.
“The risk appetite the Iranians have got for doing this is, I think, higher and is clearly a threat to opponents of the regime and the Jewish community as well,” he said.
“There’s a clear uptick in the willingness of the Iranians to act this way.”
The report comes shortly after Iran was placed alongside Russia in the top tier of the British government’s new register to track “covert foreign influence”.
The committee took evidence from August 2021 to August 2023, before Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing conflicts in the Middle East.
The report’s authors acknowledged that the “landscape in the Middle East had changed significantly” but said its broader look at Iran’s activities “remained relevant”.
The report warned of Iranian espionage and cyber threats and said the UK was a “priority target”, but said the threat was “narrower” and “less sophisticated” than that posed by Russia and China.
It recommended the government take a more long-term approach to the Iran threat saying too much government action had been “firefighting” in response to immediate crises.
The UK government said it would “take action wherever necessary to protect national security” and said the report demonstrated “the vital work our security and intelligence agencies do countering threats posed by states such as Iran”.
Iran denied the allegations. It said they were “baseless, irresponsible, and intended to malign Iran’s legitimate regional and national interests”.
[English News]
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