British lawmakers say Iran threat to UK is significant, rising

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 say in a newly released report.

The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee says the Iranian threat varies 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, says in a statement.

“We remain concerned that the government’s policy on Iran has been focused on crisis management and has been primarily driven by concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, to the exclusion of other issues.”

Iran’s embassy in London does not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The committee says the British government should fully examine whether it would be practicable to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an action that some lawmakers have long called for.

Although the evidence given to the committee concluded in August 2023, the lawmakers say their recommendations about action the government should take remains relevant.

Last year, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 said that 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 Britain who were regarded by Tehran as a threat.

Iran reacted to that speech by rejecting what it said were repetitive accusations by British security officials.

British security services say Tehran uses criminal proxies to carry out its work in Britain.

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