Britain has arrested at least eight Iranian nationals for plotting terrorist acts in the United Kingdom.
The UK government has not described the intended targets, but The Times of London said one target was the Israeli embassy in Britain. Since Israeli embassies in a number of other countries have been targeted by the Islamic Republic, such an attack in London is certainly not unimaginable.
The British police said two groups of people were arrested May 3 in two separate plots. One involved the arrest of five men, four of whom were Iranian nationals and the nationality of the fifth had not been established.
The other involved the arrest of three Iranian nationals. Days later, another Iranian national was arrested for suspected links to that second plot.
What was unique about these arrests was that the involved so many Iranians. In recent years, police in Europe have accused the Islamic Republic of hiring local thugs and underworld characters to carry out attacks on Israelis and on Iranian dissidents in Europe.
But the concept of Iran plotting attacks in the UK was nothing new. Last October, the head of MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence agency, Ken McCollum, said the authorities had foiled 20 plots hatched by the Islamic Republic in the UK since 2022.
One of the men in the latest alleged plots was grabbed by plainclothes police while walking through a shopping area in Swindon and spirited away in handcuffs.
Another group of Iranians was arrested by police with semi-automatic weapons who descended on a house in Rochdale, smashed a window and broke down the door before rushing inside the house.
The arrests came a week before the fourth meeting of Iranian and American negotiators working on a new nuclear agreement between the two countries. There was speculation—but no evidence—that the terror acts plotted in Britain were being launched by the Pasdaran in an effort to cause frictions that would spike the negotiations.
In Tehran, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denied there was any Iranian terror plot in the UK. He said, “There is a history of third parties bent on derailing diplomacy and provoking escalation resorting to desperate measures, including false flag operations,” he said.
