Report warns of ‘significant increase’ in threat from Iran to UK Jewish and Israeli interests

Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has warned there has been a significant increase in the threat posed by Iran against Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.

In a report released on Thursday, the ISC said Iran poses one of the gravest state-based threats to British national security, on a par with states like Russia and China.

The 240 page report highlighted Tehran’s escalating willingness to carry out assassinations, espionage, and cyber attacks within the United Kingdom, and calls for a fundamental shift in British strategy toward the Islamic Republic.

Drawing on classified intelligence and interviews with senior officials across MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the Cabinet Office, and the Home Office, it warns:”Since the beginning of 2022, there has been a significant increase in the physical threat posed by Iran to those residing in the UK.

“It has significantly increased both in pace and with regard to the number of threats. This threat is focused acutely on dissidents and other opponents of the regime. There is also an increased threat against Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.”

It added: “There have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022.”

Sources in the intelligence community elaborated that the Iranian threat was mainly: “related to media organisations but there is also [the] threat to dissidents associated with political parties that are seen as in opposition to the Iranian regime and also occasionally to Jewish individuals of prominence as well.”

Worryingly, the report noted how  British intelligence officials had testified that Iranian operatives have shown a willingness “to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK.”

“The threat of physical attack on individuals in the UK is now the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran,” the Homeland Security Group told the Committee. “It is comparable with the threat posed by Russia.”

The Committee welcomed some steps taken by the UK Government since receiving the draft report in April 2024, including the designation of Iran under the Enhanced Tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme and new legal powers enabling the proscription of state-backed entities such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

However, the Committee criticised the government for its approach to Iran, saying it has long been defined by short-term crisis management, heavily skewed by the nuclear issue at the expense of broader geopolitical, societal, and regional dynamics.

“The Government’s policy on Iran has suffered from a focus on crisis management and has been primarily driven by concerns over Iran’s nuclear program—to the exclusion of other issues,” the report said.

“’Fire-fighting’ has prevented the Government from developing a real understanding of Iran, with a lack of Iran-specific expertise across Government.”

The report from the nine-member committee, which scrutinises the work of Britain’s intelligence agencies, only covers the period up to August 2023, prior to the October 7th Hamas attacks in Israel, and publication was delayed by last year’s election.

Between the beginning of 2022 and the end of the committee’s evidence-gathering in August 2023, the report found there had been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK residents.

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”.

Committee chairman Lord Beamish said: “Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests”.

Describing Iran’s “high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity”, he added: “As the committee was told, Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with.”

His committee also recommended that the Government consider whether it was “legally possible and practicable” to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation and make a full statement to Parliament on the issue.

Ministers have faced calls in recent years to ban the IRGC, but the committee recognised there were “complexities inherent” in such a decision.

Since August 2023, the international picture has changed with the outbreak of war following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October of that year.

The war has seen Iranian proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah weakened, while last month the US and Israel carried out air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over concerns Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon.

But the committee insisted that, despite these changes, its recommendations remained “relevant”.

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.

It found that Iran had been “broadly compliant” with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limited its nuclear ambitions.

But since the US under Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, the threat of a nuclear Iran had increased and Tehran “had the capability to arm in a relatively short period”.

It also warned that the UK remained a target for Iranian espionage, which it found was “narrower in scope and scale” and “less sophisticated” than the threat from Russia and China.

And while Iran had engaged in political interference activity, it said this had had “a negligible effect”.

But the report cautioned that Iran-backed cultural and educational centres such as the Islamic Centre of England could be being used to “promote violent and extremist ideology”.

The committee said it was also “essential” to “raise the resilience bar” on cybersecurity across the UK in the face of Iran’s willingness to carry out digital attacks.

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”.

One witness told the committee: “If you have people running policy in the Foreign Office who don’t speak a word of Persian, then that is a fat lot of good.”

The committee also noted that the UK had sanctioned 508 individuals and 1,189 individuals relating to Iran by August 2023, but urged the Government to reconsider whether sanctions “will in practice deliver behavioural change or in fact unhelpfully push Iran towards China”.

But it welcomed the decision to place Iran in the “enhanced tier” of the new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, placing extra burdens on people acting on Tehran’s behalf in the UK.

A spokesperson from the Jewish Leadership Council said: “This report confirms what we have long-known to be true: the Iranian regime actively targets Jews and Israelis on UK soil. Indeed, the threat of physical attack on individuals in the UK by Iran is now at ‘the greatest level’, and comparable with the danger posed by Russia.

“We are grateful to the security services for their response to this threat, and endorse the committee’s call on the government to make it clear to Iran that any attack on Jews or Israelis in the UK would by treated as a direct attack on the UK!”

In a statement posted to Twitter/X, CST said the report demonstrates “there is an urgent need to crack down on pro-Iranian organisations and activists in this country who are involved in inciting extremism and antisemitism.”