British officials will shortly announce a decision on proscribing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as English police are given more time to question Iranians arrested on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism.
Britain's Security Minister Dan Jarvis has revealed that the findings of a review by Jonathan Hall, the government's security adviser, on how to take action against Iran would be published soon.
In a statement to the House of Commons on the arrests of May 3 and 4, Mr Jarvis said the threats were among the most complex the police have tackled.
“The two operations that took place across multiple locations this weekend were significant and complex,” he said. “They were some of the largest counter-state threats and counter-terrorism actions that we have seen in recent times.”
A total of eight men, seven of whom are Iranian, were detained in two operations over the holiday weekend.
Five of the arrests were part of an operation against an alleged plot to “target specific premises”. Two men aged 29 were detained in Swindon in Wiltshire and Stockport in Cheshire, a 40-year-old was held in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, a 46-year-old in West London and a 24-year-old was detained in the city of Manchester.
The warrants mean the suspects can be held and questioned until Saturday May 10.
At that point they can be charged, released or the police can hold them until two weeks after they were arrested. A fifth man has now been released on bail until later this month.
Social media video of the operations purported to show armed police surrounding and entering a house in a council estate. A man was removed and the house remained cordoned off on Sunday when forensic investigations began.
Although the police have yet to confirm whether or not the foiled operations were backed by the Iranian state, last weekend's arrests have intensified calls to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
Mr Hall, the UK's counter-terrorism and foreign state influence laws adviser, is conducting a review for the government on the IRGC's activities.
Mr Jarvis said Mr Hall had been asked by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to review how counter terrorism measures “could be applied to modern day state threats, such as those from Iran”.
“The Home Secretary specifically asked the reviewer to look at a state threats proscription tool so we are not held back in limitations in applying counter-terrorism legislation to state threats,” Mr Jarvis added in his update.
“Jonathan Hall has now completed his review and will publish it shortly and the government will not hesitate to take action in response to Mr Hall’s advice.”
US-Iran nuclear deal
For years, the UK sought to strike a “balance” of imposing sanctions on Iran, but stopped short of proscription to keep diplomatic channels open, according to Nicholas Hopton, who served as the UK’s ambassador to Iran and now runs the Middle East Association.
But the UK is likely to wait for a new US nuclear deal with Tehran to go through before it reviews its options on Iran.
Talks between Tehran and Washington began in April, with US President Donald Trump seeking to renegotiate the terms of a deal signed between the US, Iran and other European partners in 2015.
“The UK government would probably want to see the deal succeed thereby stopping Iran from militarising its nuclear capability,” Mr Hopton told The National.
“It might decide to see where the nuclear negotiations lead to before reconsidering its options on Iran”
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was first negotiated under US president Barack Obama and involved 15-year restrictions to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
Mr Trump withdrew from the deal during his first term, pursuing instead a campaign of “maximum pressure” and criticising the deal for overlooking Tehran’s growing ballistic missiles programme or its use of regional armed proxies.
Yet the terms of the new deal appear to be narrowed down again to the nuclear issue. The JCPOA’s sunset clauses, which come up later this year, are likely to get both sides moving quickly on a deal, despite the public standoffs.
“That imposes a pressure on both sides to move towards a deal,” Mr Hopton said.
Ken McCallum, the head of the MI5 security service, has said repeatedly of plots emanating from the Iranian state, led by the IRGC and the Ministry of State Security.
The 20 potentially lethal plots tracked by the UK were described last year by officials as developing at an unprecedented pace and scale. The Iranian activities in the UK have both increased and broadened in focus.
Yet the UK’s embassy in Tehran has been a “valuable” asset in dealing with issues such as Britons who have been illegally detained by the Iranian regime, Mr Hopton said.
“If you proscribe the IRGC there would be an increased possibility that diplomatic relations and the UK’s scope for engaging and influencing the regime would be damaged or even severed,” he said.
Iran's influence
One of the Iranians arrested has close connections to the regime in Tehran and is from a family which runs prominent businesses, according to the Telegraph.
The use of Iranian nationals in an alleged terrorist plot may represent a change in tactics from Tehran’s preference of hiring criminals.
Details of the premises raided have not been revealed but it is believed to have been used by an Iranian opposition group.
Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: “Our officers and staff are progressing what is a significant and highly complex investigation, and we still have searches and activity under way at multiple addresses across the country.
“We believe that a specific premises was the target of this suspected plot and counter terrorism policing officers remain in close contact.
“The investigation is still in its early stages and we are exploring various lines of inquiry to establish any potential motivation as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public linked to this matter.”
The majority of threats from Iran have been focused on dissidents and other Iranian-linked targets who “don't toe the line” by curtailing their activities. A series of centres of Iranian activity in the UK have come under scrutiny from both the security services and the Charities Commissioner regulations.
The Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale in London has been subjects to a warning from the commission since 2020 but there have been no findings that would lead to its closure. In that year, it held commemorations after the assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, who was killed in a US strike near Baghdad airport.
Its director Seyed Hashem Moosavi was the acknowledged representative of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the UK and stepped down from his role there in 2022.
The centre maintains that it serves the community in West London and is not linked to Iran.
In 2023, an Austrian was convicted of carrying out “hostile reconnaissance” against the London headquarters of Iran International, a broadcaster which is critical of Iran's government. The following year, a British-based journalist of Iranian origin who worked for Iran International was stabbed in London.
This year, the government placed Iran on the highest tier of the new foreign influence register, requiring it to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK.
