Britain is facing a “staggering rise” in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on UK soil by Russia and Iran, as the two states recruit criminals to “do their dirty work”, the head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency said on Tuesday.
MI5 director general Ken McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the UK if conflicts in West Asia deepen.
The spy chief said if the crisis escalates with Israel launching a major attack in response to Iran’s recent missile barrage, there is the risk “of an increase in — or broadening of — Iranian state aggression in the UK”.
In a rare public speech setting out the major threats to the UK from both states and militant groups, McCallum argued that hostile states, radicalised individuals and a revived Islamic State group have combined to create “the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen”.
McCallum said there also is a risk that Israel’s conflicts with Iran-backed militant groups — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen — could trigger attacks in the UK, though so far the crisis has not translated “at scale into terrorist violence” in Britain.
The number of state-threat investigations undertaken by MI5 has risen by 48 per cent in the past year, with Iran, Russia and China the main perpetrators, McCallum told journalists
McCallum said that since the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian police custody in September 2022 after being detained for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s mandatory headscarf law, “we’ve seen plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale”.
He said MI5 and the police have responded to 20 lethal Iran-backed plots since January 2022, an increase of a third on the figure of 15 the government gave at the end of January. McCallum said Russia’s military intelligence agency was trying to use “arson, sabotage and more” to create “mayhem” on the streets of Britain.
