UK Faces Rising “Unpredictable” Iran Threat: Intelligence Report Warns of Attacks on Dissidents/Journalists

A UK intel­li­gence report warns that the coun­try faces a ris­ing Iran threat, cit­ing at least 15 Iran­ian-backed assas­si­na­tion or kid­nap plots tar­get­ing dis­si­dents and Jew­ish or Israeli inter­ests since 2022. On 10 July 2025, BBC report­ed that a UK intel­li­gence com­mit­tee had warned of a sig­nif­i­cant increase in these attempts on British soil, urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to treat them as direct attacks on the UK. The arti­cle begins:

A wide-rang­ing report by an intel­li­gence com­mit­tee has set out the risks Iran pos­es to the UK. In late 2023, British-Iran­ian jour­nal­ist Sima Sabet was informed of an assas­si­na­tion plot against her and was pro­vid­ed a pan­ic but­ton by London’s counter-ter­ror­ism police. The fol­low­ing year, author­i­ties indi­cat­ed she was at risk with­in her home and advised her to leave imme­di­ate­ly. At that time, she was work­ing for Iran Inter­na­tion­al and had pre­vi­ous­ly been affil­i­at­ed with the BBC’s World Ser­vice, cur­rent­ly broad­cast­ing direct­ly on X. She described the pro­found impact of liv­ing under threat, stat­ing that it affects her social life and dai­ly activ­i­ties, forc­ing her to be “con­stant­ly cau­tious” and aware of poten­tial attacks. Sabet expressed her hope that the gov­ern­ment would “act deci­sive­ly” in response to the report and “issue a strong mes­sage that the Islam­ic Repub­lic can­not oper­ate on UK soil,” empha­siz­ing that this sit­u­a­tion con­sti­tutes a vio­la­tion of UK secu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty, which she believes should be a “red line.”

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98wjzj4jlpo

Key Points:

• The UK intel­li­gence com­mit­tee found at least 15 Iran­ian-backed mur­der or kid­nap attempts against UK-based indi­vid­u­als since 2022.

• Threats are focused on Iran­ian dis­si­dents and Jew­ish or Israeli inter­ests, now con­sid­ered on par with those from Rus­sia.

• The report urges the UK gov­ern­ment to treat such attempts as direct attacks on nation­al secu­ri­ty and respond accord­ing­ly.

• Iran’s embassy in Lon­don reject­ed the report’s find­ings, call­ing them “unfound­ed and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.”

Historical Analysis of UK Vulnerabilities

The his­to­ry of the Iran­ian threat toward the UK is marked by a per­sis­tent pat­tern of sub­ver­sion that includes covert polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, alliances with left-wing groups, and direct secu­ri­ty threats, as evi­denced by secu­ri­ty con­cerns high­light­ed in Par­lia­ment. Iran­ian-backed oper­a­tions have recent­ly esca­lat­ed into a hybrid shad­ow war, with net­works already inside Britain engag­ing in dig­i­tal dis­in­for­ma­tion, intim­i­da­tion, and exploita­tion of the UK’s legal sys­tem. The oper­a­tional land­scape is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by front groups sup­port­ing pro­scribed Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tions, while polit­i­cal pres­sure mounts to des­ig­nate the IRGC as a ter­ror­ist enti­ty. In response, the UK has moved to tight­en for­eign influ­ence reg­u­la­tions, reflect­ing an urgent need for trans­paren­cy and vig­i­lance. The phe­nom­e­non of Iran­ian-linked orga­ni­za­tions part­ner­ing with far-left move­ments demon­strates ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and ampli­fy­ing sub­ver­sive nar­ra­tives. The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of infor­ma­tion war­fare has fur­ther inten­si­fied these risks, as Iran has ramped up cyber-enabled influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing the UK and its allies, com­bin­ing authen­tic and mis­lead­ing con­tent to polar­ize and con­fuse the pub­lic. These Iran­ian strate­gies fre­quent­ly inter­sect with Russ­ian and Chi­nese media oper­a­tions, ampli­fy­ing the reach and impact of dis­in­for­ma­tion, espi­onage, and hybrid warfare.

Exter­nal References:

• UK faces ‘unpre­dictable threat’ from Iran, intel­li­gence report warns

• U.K. Faces Ris­ing Threat From Iran­ian Plots, Intel­li­gence Report Says

• Threat of Iran­ian attacks on UK now com­pa­ra­ble to Rus­sia, MPs warn

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.