Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is using online grooming tactics to recruit potential operatives in Britain, a report by the Daily Express said on Friday, one day after London vowed to frustrate what it called escalating Iranian threats to people on UK soil.
The Daily Express said men of Middle Eastern and Eastern European origin living in the UK have been approached to form informal networks of sleeper cells and lone-wolf actors.
“An arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has used the internet and social media to put in place an informal but complex mosaic of sleeper cells and lone-wolf operatives across the country, ready to act at the behest of the regime," the report added.
The Daily Express said their main roles involve spying, intimidation, and harassment, but claimed MI5 agents had uncovered at least one bomb plot that “could have been as devastating as the 7/7 London bombings," the suicide attacks in central London on 7 July 2005 that killed 56 people and injured 784 others.
On Thursday, the British government said it "has long recognized there is a persistent and growing physical threat to people posed by Iran to the UK."
"Direct action against UK targets has substantially increased over recent years," the government wrote, vowing to counter Iran's escalating attacks on the UK soil.
"We have taken significant steps to ensure the safety of UK citizens and ensure our
world-leading law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the tools they need to
disrupt and degrade the threats that we face from Iran," the government added.
The government report came in the form of point-by-point responses to a July 10 Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee on Iran which said Iran poses one of the gravest state-based threats to British national security, on par those from Russia and China.
The government confirmed parliament's findings that Iranian intelligence has developed close ties with criminal gangs "to expand the capability of its networks and obscure their involvement in malign activity."
The parliamentary report concluded Iran is increasingly willing to carry out assassinations, espionage and cyber attacks within the United Kingdom
Tehran's embassy in London at the time rejected the allegations as "baseless, politically motivated and hostile claims."
