The UK’s relentless commitment to appeasement doubtless convinced the mullahs that they could act with impunity on British soil.
“Iran plotted assassinations on UK soil: Tehran tried to kill or kidnap ten ‘enemies of the regime’ who were living in Britain in the last year, the boss of MI5 says – as he warns of ‘very real’ threat posed by China and Russia,” by Rory Tingle, MailOnline, November 16, 2022:
Iran has plotted to kill or kidnap at least 10 British residents it accuses of being ‘enemies of the regime’ on UK soil this year alone, the boss of MI5 dramatically revealed today.
Director general Ken McCallum said while Tehran had long used violence to silence critics at home, its ‘aggressive intelligence services’ have now crossed the line to threatening Britain directly.
‘At its sharpest, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime,’ he said.
‘We have seen at least 10 such potential threats since January alone.’…
Chinese authorities are ‘trying to re-write the rulebook, to buy the league, to recruit our coaching staff to work for them’, while Iran ‘will only let people support one team and is prepared to use violence against those who don’t toe the line.’
‘We’re alive to the risk of these teams loaning players to each other, amplifying their strengths’, he added as he highlighted Iran providing support to Russia by supplying drones ‘inflicting misery in Ukraine’.
Last week, the Foreign Office summoned the Iranian deputy ambassador over claims two London-based journalists had faced death threats from Tehran-backed agents over their reporting of protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September. She’d been arrested for not wearing her hijab according to official standards.
Iran International, a news channel, was told by the Metropolitan police earlier this week that it believes there were credible threats to the journalists’ lives.
The broadcaster said in a statement: ‘These lethal threats to British citizens on British soil come after several weeks of warnings from the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and Iranian government about the work of a free and uncensored Farsi-language media working in London.’
Tory backbencher Bob Blackman raised the issue in the Commons on Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr McCallum said while rising state threats are a ‘huge challenge’, getting ahead of terror plots was ‘still the first thing the British public expect of us’, as he told how so-called lone wolf terrorists were ‘fiendishly hard to detect and disrupt’.
MI5 and the police have disrupted 37 late-stage terror attack plots since the start of 2017, including a further eight since Mr McCallum gave his last update on threats in July last year.
Security services are seeing growing attempts by right-wing extremists to ‘acquire weapons’, particularly firearms, ‘well in advance of any specific targeting intent developing’, Mr McCallum said.
There are also growing numbers of right-wing extremist ‘influencers’ which ‘fuel grievances and amplify conspiracy theories.’
Terrorism inspired by Islamist ideology still accounts for about three-quarters of MI5’s terrorist caseload, Mr McCallum added….
Keith O says
Given the state of weakness within the UK gumbyment, I’m surprised that the attempts were thwarted.