The threat of physical attacks by Iran on people living in the UK has increased ‘significantly’ since 2022, Parliament’s intelligence watchdog has warned in a bombshell report
Iran’s nuclear weapons programme poses a direct threat to the UK, a bombshell report based on classified intelligence has warned.
A report published on Monday by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee described the threat from Iran as “persistent” and “unpredictable”. The committee found the “physical threat” from Iran had “significantly increased” and was now “comparable with the threat posed by Russia”. It also warned that the nuclear threat from Iran had increased since the US withdrew from a key international agreement in 2018, arguing that de-escalation “must be a priority”. In relation to Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the report said: “Iran proceeding with its nuclear weapons programme would pose a threat both to UK nationals in the region and to the UK mainland and to global security more broadly if it led to regional nuclear proliferation and exacerbated regional instability”.
On Iran’s cyber security threat, it said its capabilities are not as sophisticated as those of Russia and China. But it added: “Iran poses a significant espionage threat to the UK and its interests, projected primarily via cyber capabilities, but also via human agents. The UK must raise the cost to Iran of it launching a cyber-attack on the UK, so as to deter it from doing so.”
The report from the nine-member committee, which scrutinises the work of Britain’s intelligence agencies, only covers the period up to August 2023 and publication was delayed by last year’s election. The report said that between the beginning of 2022 and August 2023, there were “at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals”.
It adds: “Iran does not view attacks on dissident, Jewish and Israeli targets in the UK as attacks on the UK. It rather sees the UK as collateral in its handling of internal matters – i.e. removing perceived enemies of the regime – on UK soil.”
The committee urged the Government to make clear to Tehran that such attempts would “constitute an attack on the UK and would receive the appropriate response”. In the report, the committee’s chairman Lord Beamish said: “Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests. Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and its intelligence services are ferociously well-resourced with significant areas of asymmetric strength.
“It supplements this with its use of proxy groups – including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organisations, and private cyber actors to provide it with a deniable means of attacking its adversaries with minimal risk of retaliation.”
The committee warned that, while Iran had neither developed a nuclear weapon nor decided to produce one by August 2023, it had taken steps towards that goal in recent years. The report adds: “The Homeland Security Group told us that the threat of physical attack on individuals in the UK is now ‘the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran’ and comparable with the threat posed by Russia.”
Regarding the Government’s response to the Iranian threat, the committee warned that policy had “suffered from a focus on crisis management” over Iran’s nuclear programme and lacked “longer-term thinking”. It also criticised a “lack of Iran-specific expertise”, saying there was “seemingly no interest in building a future pipeline of specialists”.