Secret MI5 missions. A honey-trap kidnapping plot. High-tech cyber operations against top British companies.
These are some of the alarming but fascinating stories on the dangers posed to the UK and British people by Iranian agents and their deadly proxies, revealed by spy agencies in an official report.
When Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) released its document last week, it prompted headlines about the “significant increase” in physical threats to British targets by Iran, including through planned assassinations.
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But it’s the examples scattered throughout its 246 pages – disclosing many specific cases for the first time – that highlight how serious the situation is.
Sir Jeremy Wright MP, the committee’s deputy chair, warned that Iran’s agents are now more prepared to carry out violent attacks in the UK than ever before. And although they tend to target dissidents and political figures, “there’s a risk of the damage being collateral to other members of the community”, he told The i Paper.
From phishing attempts to counter-espionage efforts, here are some of the most startling and intriguing nuggets of information contained in the report.
Iran has been “setting up fake ‘personae’ online to contact individuals of interest”, the document warns – including through so-called honey trap schemes. One of their methods involves “using romantic approaches to initiate contact with targets and persuade them to travel to a third country”.
On one occasion, an Iranian national residing in the UK was convinced to travel to a foreign nation “to meet an individual that they had met online”. This was “part of an operation to attempt to force them to return to Iran”, where returnees can face execution.
Thankfully for this individual, the British authorities were able to return them to the UK, but this tactic will continue to pose dangers.
Targeting of British universities
Iran’s regime has been aiming to “acquire material and knowledge from UK industry and academia to support the development of its military”. This includes attempts to boost its nuclear programme.
In one case, an Iranian scientist sought to collaborate with a UK university to build something. What exactly that something was has been redacted from the report. But it reveals that intelligence agencies advised the university to reject the project because it “would probably have supported Iran’s weapons programme”.
MI5 has issued at least two “espionage alerts” to Whitehall departments over Iranian agents operating in the UK, the report says.
In another case, an agent who had secured British visas – in past years when Iran was thought to be a less severe threat – was stopped from entering the UK on national security grounds.
Matthew Dunn, a former MI6 official, said Iran has been “aggressively active” in the UK, and British intelligence agencies have been “firefighting” Tehran’s clandestine activities for decades.
He told The i Paper: “MI5 and others have an all-time high of workload when it comes to the Iranian threat in Britain and our partner countries. And that workload is fraught, complex, prone to inevitable moments of failure, and ultimately highly dangerous.”
Charming Kitten
Many cyber groups around the world have used curious names, from Cozy Bear to Cult of the Dead Cow, and Iran’s online warriors are no different. One unit named Charming Kitten has targeted academic sources that might hold “nuclear-related information”.
“It is believed to have targeted a range of sectors, including US and UK universities and think tanks, academics, and organisations focused on conflict resolution,” the report says.
Iranian cyber forces have become “proficient” in their use of “spear-phishing,” the report states. This is where they try to “gain credentials that confirm an individual’s identity and to deploy malware”, the report warns.
In one case, a group known as Cardamom – linked to Iranian intelligence – compromised an account linked to an embassy. It does not reveal which country’s diplomats were targeted, nor where in the world this happened, but Cardamom “was able to obtain several emails from this account”, which may have come from a sensitive source.
Iran has used various cyber groups to carry out online intelligence operations (Image: Mirsad Sarajlic/ Getty/iStockphoto)How British firms are targeted overseas
Yet another Iranian-linked unit, called APT33, is said to be “one of the most active cyber groups in the Middle East”.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre believes that APT33 “was almost certainly responsible for an offensive cyber-attack on the Middle East-based computer systems of a UK-headquartered oil services company”. The firm was probably targeted because of its links to the energy giant Saudi Aramco.
Although this operation was intended to harm Iran’s major rival Saudi Arabia, the report warns that it “demonstrates Iran’s willingness to risk collateral damage and the potential threat to UK energy security”.
Iran relies on organised crime groups to carry out intelligence operations and assassinations on its behalf – with the jobs being ordered so covertly that sometimes the gangsters don’t know who they are working for.
“Sometimes these criminals are recruited as operatives who themselves are not aware of the purpose of their activity,” the report says. “This includes using drug-smuggling networks.”
Lord Beamish, the ISC Chair, told The i Paper that Tehran has “used proxies in successful attempts in both the Netherlands and Turkey, where someone’s been killed using organised crime networks… Using other people, which might not be linked directly to the regime, gives them deniability.”
Top-secret UK counter-espionage operations
A variety of mysterious British spying missions against Iranian opponents are revealed by the report. Some are so secret that only their codenames are revealed – such as Operation Ginger, on which every single detail was redacted. But more has been allowed through by the censors on others.
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MI5 launched Operation Nutmeg against a network of agents belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which was “gathering intelligence against Israeli or Jewish targets” in 2020. Suspects were arrested under the Official Secrets Act 1911, with these actions apparently having “the desired effect”.
Operation Anise tackled assassination plots by the Iranian Intelligence Services against Iranian dissidents in Europe. It was initiated in 2018 against “a criminal network run by narcotics trafficker and IIS agent Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an Iranian national based in Turkey”, the document says.
Zindashti is now back in Iran and is wanted by the FBI after being implicated in a murder plot in the US which led to convictions earlier this year – though he has denied ever working for Iranian intelligence.
The report claims that British officers had a “significant disruptive effect” against the gang. It also identified individuals “deemed to have direct involvement in the assassinations” of three Iranian dissidents on the continent between 2015 and 2017, with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security held responsible.
Concerns about the UK’s fightback
The ISC report was sharply critical of the UK Government’s approach to Iran, accusing it of “too much talking, at the expense of action” – although it concluded its evidence sessions in late 2023, before Labour came into office last year.
The committee, which has privileged access to scrutinise government and intelligence agency work, concluded that UK policy on Iran has been driven largely by concerns over its nuclear programme, “to the exclusion of other issues,” and has “suffered from a focus on crisis management”.
Wright has grown concerned about the lack of a “coordinated, long-term strategy on Iran” within Whitehall, worrying that it’s not clear “who’s in charge” because responsibilities are split between different departments and agencies.
Individuals who could be targeted in the UK “will not be able to feel safe,” he said. He urged the Government to send a clear message to Tehran that its behaviour has been “truly unacceptable”.
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