Head of MI5 warns Iran targeting UK

EVIDENCE SOUGHT: Iran protested what it called an ‘irresponsible and destructive approach’ by the British security agency, which also warned of myriad other threats

Iran is trying to hit military sites in Britain and the suspected plot to attack a US-run military air base last month was “not unique,” the head of the MI5 spy agency said on Tuesday, as he warned that Tehran and Moscow are expanding their attacks against the UK.

Ken McCallum, who leads the UK’s domestic security service, said that Tehran is seeking to intensify its attacks in Britain beyond the traditional targets of Iranians opposed to the country’s Islamic authorities.

That has included arson and sabotage attacks on Jewish sites that Britain says were carried out by Iranian proxies.

MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum speaks at Thames House in London on Tuesday.

Photo: Reuters

Another “major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites,” McCallum said.

The incident at Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford “is not unique. There have been other examples, not just in the UK but around the world,” he said.

His comments came as Iran summoned British Ambassador to Iran Hugo Shorter to warn it could “seriously reconsider” bilateral relations unless the UK provides evidence linking Tehran to the alleged plot.

Tehran told the ambassador it was protesting what it called Britain’s “irresponsible and destructive approach.”

“The British government must provide documents and evidence supporting its accusations against Iran,” the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

McCallum delivered his annual speech outlining major threats to the UK as counterterror detectives investigate a suspected terror plot against the US-run base in western England, which has been used to bomb Iran during this year’s war.

Scores of residents were evacuated from their homes near the base on Sept. 27 as armed police officers and army bomb-disposal experts swarmed the rural area.

Police later said they had found a quantity of an accelerant — gasoline — in three vans at the site, but no explosives.

Seven men in their 20s have been arrested and released on bail under investigation.

In all, more than 50 people have been arrested over Iran-linked plots in the past year, McCallum said.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Monday said that the apparent plot was “almost certainly” directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC).

Iran has denied involvement, although it has previously said that it considers any base used to attack its territory a legitimate target.

The US pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford after the incident and the administration of US President Donald Trump said it believed the base faced Iranian threats intended to kill as many US troops and destroy as many US planes as possible.

Iran has so far used low-level criminal proxies who lack the capacity to mount a sophisticated large-scale attack, McCallum said.

However, the IRGC has shown stronger capabilities in countries closer to Iran, “so it would be foolish for a person in a role like mine to discount the possibility,” he added.

McCallum said that the UK faces a “new era of national security,” with a generational shift equivalent to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the US.

The myriad threats to national security now range from “arson, sabotage, cyberattacks, coercion, violence” to “what online algorithms are feeding your teenagers in their bedrooms,” he said.

McCallum said his agency’s work countering state threats — chiefly from Russia, Iran and China — has quadrupled in the past decade, while Russia and Iran are escalating hybrid warfare campaigns against the UK and other European countries.

Russia has been linked to attacks including an attempt to use an explosives-laden drone at Germany’s Leipzig airport and is “using tactics that stop short — though sometimes not much short — of conventional conflict,” he said.