Iranian state "now biggest threat to UK" Home secretary’s fears over spies’ links to gangs

The Sunday Times has published an article claiming that the British authorities consider Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) the biggest threat to the country's national security. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the biggest threat to Britain’s national security, the home secretary believes, amid fresh evidence of its reach into this country.

Suella Braverman fears that the group is stepping up its activities and is concerned by intelligence reports that Iranian spies are attempting to recruit members of organised crime gangs to target regime opponents.

“The Iranian threat is the one that worries us the most,” a source close to the home secretary said. “It’s a big issue because they are getting much more aggressive and their appetite is increasing. They are very defensive to anyone challenging their regime and just want to stamp it out. They are increasing their agitation.”

MI5 warned last year that Tehran had been behind ten murder and kidnap plots and in February this year the Metropolitan Police said it had risen to 15. Iran International, a dissident TV channel, was forced to stop broadcasting from its British headquarters after Scotland Yard warned it could not protect staff.

There have been calls for the Revolutionary Guard to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation but these met resistance from the Foreign Office, which is concerned such a move could do permanent damage to diplomatic relations.

The Sunday Times can reveal details of the close relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and a student organisation based in a former Methodist church in Hammersmith, west London.

The Islamic Students Association was founded to champion the political and religious philosophy of Ayatollah Khomeini, who led Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979. It now hosts talks with hardline clerics and government officials, while its internal elections are supervised by religious representatives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

In January the association’s former chairman, Mohammad Hussain Ataee, a master’s degree student at the University of Bradford, travelled to a conference in Tehran, where he met Khamenei. A picture shows Ataee kneeling solemnly before Khamenei, 84. Afterwards he received a “blessed” keffiyeh — a traditional Arabic headdress — as a gift. The association said Ataee had not been in post since October last year.

However, the association’s Telegram channel has shared posts praising Qasem Soleimani, a senior military officer in the Revolutionary Guard who was killed by the United States. These describe Soleimani as a “martyr” and a leader of “resistance”. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the assassinated chief scientist of Iran’s nuclear programme, has also been called a martyr.

In October 2020 the association shared a post from the supreme leader saying: “Why is it a crime to raise doubts about the Holocaust?” The association has also posted content praising Iran’s role undermining “global Zionism” by “spreading thoughts of martyrdom, sacrifice [and] resistance”.

It hosts events at Kanoon Towhid, the old Hammersmith church, which has a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini at its altar and the Islamic republic’s flag.

The site is owned by the Al-Tawheed Charitable Trust. Two of its three trustees are linked to the Islamic Centre of England, a mosque in nearby Maida Vale that was closed for several months this year after using its premises to eulogise Soleimani, and remains under investigation by the Charity Commission.

One trustee is Seyed Hashem Moosavi, the mosque’s director described in the student association’s literature as “representative of the supreme leader in England”. He has described anti-regime protesters as “soldiers of satan” and Iranian women removing hijabs as “poison”.

Moosavi yesterday appeared to accept that representatives of Khamenei supervised the student association’s elections, but insisted: “It’s religious. Definitely not related to the government.”

Of the church-turned-Islamic centre, he said: “Every week students come together, talk about their own problems, student problems, cultural problems, family problems, they sit together and sometimes they invite people for, like, the birthday of their religious leaders or the martyrdom of their religious leaders.” He insisted it was “nothing to do with the Islamic Republic.”

It was claimed last week that the association hosted online talks between senior commanders from the Revolutionary Guard and Muslim students at British universities. Eight individuals belonging to the Revolutionary Guard are alleged to have given speeches to students in which antisemitic statements were made and students were told to join the coming “apocalyptic war”, according to an investigation by The Jewish Chronicle.

The talks, which were live-streamed from Iran and viewed by tens of thousands of people, mark the first time Revolutionary Guard commanders have been seen to play a direct role in disseminating regime propaganda in the UK.

The association said it had no affiliation to political parties and groups. It said sharing the ayatollah’s post about the Holocaust was not “Holocaust denial . . . but exposing western double standards when it comes to the exercise of freedom of speech”.

It said: “All our activities are clearly lawful. It would appear that you are singling out yet another Muslim group for some kind of inquisition simply because they have chosen to exercise their right to freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom to practise their religion, rights that are established in both domestic and international law.”

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, announced sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard earlier this year but there has been growing parliamentary pressure for the organisation to be officially proscribed.

Similar steps have been taken by the US and Canada, two of the UK’s partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance. There are concerns, however, that it would make it harder to revive the international talks on the deal curbing Iran’s nuclear programme. There are also fears it would result in the loss of the embassy in Tehran.

Lord Evans of Weardale, the former head of MI5, said it was important that “our domestic security needs are given proper weight.” He added: “Perceived diplomatic interests have sometimes been given precedence in the past, for instance, with regard to Russian activists, and we shouldn’t repeat that mistake.”

Alicia Kearns, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: “The proscription of the IRGC would allow us to prosecute those working on its behalf to sow discord, incite hatred, and support terror activities and assassinations on British soil. There is more and more evidence of the IRGC’s campaigns of transnational repression — we cannot afford not to act.”