Iran poses significant threat to United Kingdom, British lawmakers say in new report

UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee says risk from Tehran includes physical attacks, assassinations of dissidents and Jewish targets, espionage and cyber warfare

By Reuters 10 July 2025, 3:28 pm

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Illustrative: Police stand guard outside the Iranian embassy after a small group of protesters threw paint at the building in London, September 25, 2022. (AP/ Alastair Grant)

Iran poses a significant and wide-ranging threat to Britain and, while not in the same league as Russia or China, it is one that is rising and for which the UK government is not fully prepared, British lawmakers said in a report released on Thursday.

Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said the Iranian risk varied from physical attacks on and potential assassinations of dissidents and Jewish targets, to espionage, offensive cyber capabilities and its attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

“Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with,” the committee chair, Kevan Jones, said in a statement.

Although the evidence given to the committee concluded in August 2023, the lawmakers said their recommendations about action the government should take remained relevant and it is the latest message from the British authorities about the danger they say Tehran poses.

Last year, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 said since January 2022, his service and British police had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill British nationals or individuals based in the United Kingdom regarded by Tehran as a threat.

In March, Britain said it would require the Iranian state to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK, subjecting Tehran to an elevated tier of scrutiny in light of what it said was increasingly aggressive activity.

People sit in the sun in Victoria Tower Gardens backdropped by the Houses of Parliament in London, August 28, 2019. (Matt Dunham/AP)

In May, UK police arrested eight Iranian men who were reportedly suspected of plotting to attack the Israeli Embassy in London, with some reports saying the men were arrested mere hours before they planned to carry out such an attack.

British security services say Tehran uses criminal proxies to carry out its work in Britain, and the ISC said the threat to individuals was comparable to that posed by Russia.

In December, two Romanians were charged after a journalist working for a Persian language media organization in London was stabbed in the leg, while just month three Iranian men appeared in court charged with assisting Iran’s foreign intelligence service and plotting violence against journalists.

The ISC said the British government should fully examine whether it would be practicable to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an action for which some lawmakers have long called.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.