Iran is increasingly a threat to UK citizens and interests amid a changing Middle East as mounting tensions with Israel and the United States put Britain firmly in Tehran’s crosshairs
World events have drawn the UK increasingly into Iran’s crosshairs which have in recent years and previously been firmly focused on anti-regime dissidents, Jewish targets and Israel. As junior partner to America, which has been dubbed by Tehran as “the great Satan” this makes us stand out as somewhere where people can be targeted in the future.
But in the recent past there have been many attempts at violence against Iranian dissidents here, Jewish sites and people and, it is thought, the Israeli embassy. The UK’s intelligence and security committee chairman Lord Beamish has warned: “Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests.”
It is the word ‘unpredictable’ that is particularly alarming as perhaps it means the library of possible targets for Iran has widened in recent years. Any attack on narrowly drawn up targets can harm British civilians but there may be a suspicion in our intelligence agencies that Tehran is widening its ambitions.
Anti-Tehran regime dissidents with the Iranian diaspora have been the main targets because they are viewed as harming the Iranian revolution.
The uprising in 1979 that led Iran to where it is is seen as a continuing project, spreading power and influence throughout the Middle East and beyond. Conflict with Israel following the Gaza war has been ruinous to this project, crippling its proxies Lebanese Hezbollah, Gazan Hamas and seriously damaging the Iran backed Yemeni Houthis.
In just three years Israel has dismantled decades of achievement for Tehran which had slowly and cleverly gained the “Shia Crescent.” This was a major Middle East foothold and terror super highway stretching from Tehran, across Iraq north of Baghdad, across swathes of Syria and all the way down through Lebanon.
Tehran had placed its military and proxies right on Israel’s doorstep. It has lost much of this, even its ally Bashar al-Assad’s deposed and a Sunni ex-jihadist religiously antagonistic towards Shia-led Tehran has taken over in Syria.
At home too Iran has lost for now supposedly its nuclear programme, its air defences and its military commanders have been picked off. Israel has cost Iran dear and despite the many voices in our government against its actions in Gaza it is an ally of the UK.
As a military power Iran has shed so much credibility and actual power that its regime will feel it must close down opposition abroad and try and regain respect. Below the threshold for war cyber warfare against the UK is being committed by Iran and its allies North Korea and Russia.
But exporting sabotage, violence and espionage to the UK is clearly now an Iranian regime project. Tension between Iran and the UK goes back decades.
Britain covertly aided Iraq in its war with Iran during the 1980s and subesequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not eased the situation – and US assasinations of Iranian commanders did not draw us any closer to Tehran.
UK fighter jets have operated against Yemeni Houthis and helped defend Israel against Iran but the Britishn government has stressed they were not involved in attacking Iran with the US and Israel. It is doubtful Tehran will appreciate the subtle differences between these two defensive and offensive operations.
Just as the Iranian diaspora in the UK is vast, so too is the opportunity for Tehran’s agents to recruit someone to commit hard on British soil. As Lord Beamish says, it is “unpredictable.” There is a hint of ‘not sure’ about this statement, as discussed, and it could mean our intelligence agencies do not yet know what Tehran is planning.
In the shadows MI5 and MI6 will be immensely trying to identify targets for surveillance in a bid to clsoe down, disrupt and smash Iranian plots. There has not been a suggestion of this yet but could Iran and Russia join hands in these efforts to do harm in the UK?
Only time will tell but it is clear the British government is putting the UK public on notice that Iran is every bit as much of a threat as Russia.