Iran has planned the murder and kidnapping of at least 10 British residents whom it accuses of being “enemies of the regime”, the head of MI5 revealed on Wednesday.
In his annual address on the threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, said Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services” had crossed paths to launch terrorist attacks on British soil.
In a wide-ranging assessment, McCallum said Russia’s spy network had been dealt “the most significant blow … in recent European history” as a result of entrenched international opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine .
He said 400 Russian spies had been expelled from European countries since the start of the war and the UK alone had rejected 100 Russian diplomatic visa applications on “national security grounds”.
McCallum said that since the summer when he issued a chilling warning about China’s “game-changing strategic challenge” to the UK, MI5 had seen “even more worrying activity” that included “stalking and the assault’ of Chinese dissidents living in Britain.
McCallum also revealed that eight “potentially deadly” terror plots by Islamist and right-wing extremists had been foiled in the past 12 months.
A quarter of MI5’s counter-terrorism work now involves investigating and disrupting far-right plots compared with a fifth of its caseload just over a year ago.
Iran’s intelligence services ‘a sophisticated adversary’
The warning of Mr. McCallum on Iran follows the revelation last week that two Anglo-Iranian journalists working for an independent UK-based Persian-language television channel had been targeted for assassination by the Tehran regime.
McCallum said Iran was “the state actor that most frequently intersects with terrorism” and called Tehran’s intelligence services a “sophisticated adversary.”
The current wave of protests had prompted the regime to “resort to violence to silence critics”, McCallum said, adding: “Iran projects a threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence.
“At its most acute, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime.
“We’ve seen at least 10 potential threats since January alone.”
The Chinese use “every means at their disposal”
McCallum said the Chinese authorities are using “every means at their disposal to monitor – and when they deem necessary intimidate – the Chinese diaspora”.
“This is happening all over the world, from coercion and forced repatriation of Chinese nationals to harassment and assault.”
He said the intimidation tactics were “brought home recently… when a pro-democracy protester appeared to be the subject of violence outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester”, referring to an incident last month when a regime opponent of Xi Jinping was dragged down last month. street and beaten inside the consulate compound.