LONDON — Iran’s attempts to murder and kidnap people on U.K. soil should be treated as attacks against Britain, the government has been warned.

Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) — tasked with oversight of Britain’s intelligence agencies and which has access to top-level classified briefings — on Thursday published its long-awaited report into the threat Iran poses to Britain.

It warned that the Islamic republic has become a “full spectrum” threat across assassinations, espionage, cyber-attacks and nuclear weapons. It lambasts the previous Conservative government’s policy on Iran for being too focused on “crisis management” over Iran’s nuclear program, to the exclusion of the threats to those who live in Britain.

The inquiry — which concluded before the October 2023 attacks by Hamas in Israel — was delayed by last summer’s general election.

But Kevan Jones, the ISC chair, told POLITICO the events in the following months have shown that the threat from Tehran “is still there, it’s live.”

Officials told the committee in 2023 that while China and Russia are “Premier League” threats to Britain, Iran was “top of the Championship,” with the two other world powers running hundreds of thousands of intelligence officers compared to Iran’s tens of thousands. 

One intelligence official added: “What Iran has, is a risk appetite which is very ‘pokey’ indeed.”

Attacks on British soil

Between 2022 and 2024 there are believed to have been at least 20 Iranian-backed plots on British soil, often involving attempts to either kill or kidnap Iranian dissidents or critics of the state who have made the U.K. their home. Iran often uses proxies such as British-based criminals to carry out these attacks.

The ISC was told by government counter-terrorism officials that the attack on individuals in the U.K. is now “the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran,” with the report noting that this risk has seen a “stark” rise since 2016, when British intelligence deemed that Iran would only look to do this in “extreme circumstances.”

Since the committee took evidence, two Romanians have been charged after an Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his home in London. Separately, three Iranian men have appeared in court charged with plotting violence against journalists under instruction from Iran’s intelligence agencies.

Jeremy Wright, the committee’s deputy chair, told POLITICO that although Iran does not view these as direct attacks on Britain “the U.K. government needs to make it clear to the Iranians, that is exactly how we will regard it.”

“People are entitled to walk safely on British streets regardless of where they come from,” and that attempts to kill and kidnap increases the risk for U.K. citizens to be hurt in the process. “We think it needs to be met with an appropriate response at a government-to-government level,” he added.

Working with the enemy

Iran’s emergence as a top-level threat to Britain has seen it deepen its relationship with the other “big four” of threats to UK security — Russia, China and North Korea.

The ISC’s report noted that a shared concern about the United States has seen Iran become the main partner of Russia in the Middle East, and that it appears that the two country’s intelligence agencies are sharing intelligence which could increase the threat to the U.K..

It added that Iran’s relationship with China is more economic, with China becoming Iran’s biggest trade and economic partner and representing 36 percent of Iran’s exports.

The ISC’s chair told POLITICO that military support for Russia and economic ties to China are a concern, but said Iran’s relationship with North Korea was “more concerning” on both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

North Korea has performed detonations in at least six nuclear tests — most recently in 2017 — and is actively working to develop warheads that it can place on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its support for Russia and Iran has raised international concerns that these states can help Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship get to that point.

John Bolton, the former U.S. National Security advisor told the committee in 2023: “This connection between North Korea and Iran, which we do not fully know about or understand is something that should be in our minds at all times.”

Beyond global superpowers, the report noted that Iran — just as it does with attacks on British soil — uses proxies abroad. In the Middle East it uses a network of complex relationships with militant and terrorist groups in order to give it a deniable means of attacking British armed forces and those of its allies.