UK faces rising and unpredictable threat from Iran, report warns

Murals of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are not uncommon in Tehran - pictured here during a rally to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in 2022

The UK faces a "rising" and unpredictable threat from Iran and the government must do more to counter it, Parliament's intelligence and security committee has warned.

The call comes as it publishes the results of a major inquiry which examined Iranian state assassinations and kidnap, espionage, cyber attacks and its nuclear programme.

The report took evidence up to August 2023 so does not assess the impact of heightened tensions since the attack on 7 October that year by Hamas on Israel, or the Iran-Israel conflict - but its authors say the findings remain relevant.

The committee raised particular concern over a "sharp increase" in physical threats against opponents of Iran's regime in the UK.

Committee chair 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," he added.

The Iranian embassy in London "wholly rejected" the report's findings, which it called "biased" and "baseless".

The committee, which is tasked with overseeing Britain's spy agencies, accuses the government of focusing on "crisis management" and "fire-fighting" with Iran, as well as on its nuclear programme, at the expense of other threats, which require a better-resourced long-term response.

It continued: "Whilst Iran's activity appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China, Iran poses a wide-ranging threat to UK national security, which should not be underestimated: it is persistent and – crucially – unpredictable."

It says it was told by intelligence bodies that, in terms of the threat to the UK, Iran "would be top of the Championship rather than the Premier League, but rising".

Physical threats against people living in the UK have increased since 2022, the report found, with dissidents targeted, as well as "Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK".

The committee said there have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022 to August 2023, when the report stopped taking evidence. In October last year, the head of MI5 put the number at 20.

The report's authors said they had been advised the physical threat was "comparable with the threat posed by Russia".

It found that Iran "sees the UK as collateral in its handling of internal matters – i.e. removing perceived enemies of the regime", with increased physical threats driven by protests fuelling a sense of insecurity inside the Iranian regime.

MI5 said it has seen "persistent targeting" of Iranian media organisations operating in the UK - primarily Iran International - while BBC Persian and Manoto TV, which are broadcast from the UK, were also "prominent targets". These are seen by Iran as "deeply undermining" of its regime, the committee said.

The committee found that family members of BBC Persian journalists in Iran have reported "severe harassment, including being summoned for interrogation and threatened because their family members continue to work for the organisation".

British-Iranian journalist Sima Sabet was made aware in late 2023 that she was the target of an assassination plot, and given a panic button by counter-terrorism police in London. The following year, police said they had intelligence her life was in danger inside her home, and asked her to leave immediately.

She was working for Iran International at the time, and has also previously worked for the BBC's World Service, while she now broadcasts directly over X.

She told the BBC she has lost a significant part of her social life, can't move freely, and has to be "constantly cautious" and alert to the possibility of being attacked.

"Living under threat means your sense of safety is taken from you. It affects not just your life, but the lives of everyone around you," she said.

"From something as ordinary as hailing a taxi or ordering food - things I never do under my real name - to the constant pressure of surveillance and the knowledge that the danger is real, it shapes your entire existence."

She said she hopes the government will "react decisively" to the report and "send a powerful response that the Islamic Republic cannot operate on UK soil".

"This is a direct violation of our security and our sovereignty," she added. "This should be a red line."

Much has changed in the Middle East since 2023, the committee noted. Most recently, Israel and then the US launched strikes against Iran aimed at degrading its nuclear programme.

The report said Iran had not developed a nuclear weapon by August 2023, and had been "broadly compliant" with an international agreement to limits its programme.

The US withdrew from the deal in 2018, which meant the threat posed by a nuclear Iran increased, and the committee found Tehran "had the capability to arm in a relatively short period". Nuclear de-escalation "must be a priority", it said.

Addressing other areas, the report found:

• As of August 2023, detention was the primary physical threat to British citizens in Iran, while the threat of collateral damage to UK armed forces was the main physical risk to British nationals in the wider Middle East

• A possible evacuation of British citizens in Iran is "not unrealistic" and the government must learn lessons from previous operations, such as the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal

• The government should consider whether it would be "legally possible and practicable" to proscribe Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation

• It should also consider whether financial sanctions will change behaviour or "unhelpfully push Iran towards China"

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was asked to approve the report's release because of its intelligence-related sensitivities.

A UK government spokesperson said the report "demonstrates the vital work" by security and intelligence agencies countering threats posed by states such as Iran.

A statement continued: "We have already placed Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and introduced further sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Iran, bringing the total number of sanctions to 450."

Earlier this month, BBC director general Tim Davie called on Iran to "stop targeting journalists with violence, threats, and psychological warfare". The BBC said it was preparing to lodge a new complaint with the UN calling on Iran to cease its "campaign of persecution".