Iran recruiting British citizens to spy on Jews, dissidents - report

Iran has recruited British Shia Muslims visiting religious sites in Iran and Iraq to spy on Jews and Iranian dissidents living in the UK, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.

The British citizens were approached by recruiters from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Israeli and British officials told the Daily Mail.

An Israeli official told the British paper that Israel had given a "higher-than-usual number" of warnings to the UK about potential attacks by Iranians or proxies.

"We do not know the scale of Iranian agents inside Europe and the UK, but all it takes is for one to slip through the net," said one source to the Daily Mail.

Repeated attempts by Iran to conduct attacks in the UK

In the past year, British officials have repeatedly expressed concerns about plans by the Islamic regime to target Iranian dissidents in the UK.

In December, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron summoned Iranian Chargé d'Affaires in London Mahdi Hosseini Matin after ITV published a report detailing how Iranian spies planned to assassinate two presenters who work for the Iran International news channel, according to The Telegraph.

The ITV report revealed that Iranian spies offered a people-smuggler $200,000 to assassinate two presenters for Iran International in an attempt to show critics of the Islamic regime that they "could do harm to them at any time."

The smuggler, who works as a "double agent" for a Western intelligence agency, provided ITV with details about the plot, showing that Unit 840 of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the assassination attempt.

In late 2022, The Sunday Times reported that hundreds of journalists and political activists in the UK had received letters from British counterterrorism police warning that they may be targeted by Iran due to their opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Iran's Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib issued threats at the time against both the UK and Iran International. "England will pay for the measures it has taken to try to make Iran insecure," said Khatib, adding that "operatives" of the news channel would be pursued by Iranian intelligence.