Britain is facing a 'staggering rise" in assassination attempts on U.K. soil by Russia and Iran, as the hostile states recruit criminals to "do their dirty work" for them, the head of the U.K.'s domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday.
MI5 director Ken McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 Tehran-backed plots since 2022 and warned that Iran could expand its targets in the U.K. if Israel attacks in response to Iran's missile barrage. The spy chief said the widening conflicts in the Middle East raise the risk "of an increase in - or broadening of - Iranian state aggression in the U.K."
In a rare public speech setting out the major threats to the U.K. from both hostile states and terror groups, McCallum said there also is a risk that Israel's conflicts with Iran-backed militant groups -- Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen - could trigger terror attacks in the U.K.
The Middle East crisis has not translated "at scale into terrorist violence" in Britain, he said, but hostile states, individual attackers and a revived Islamic State group combine to create "the most complex and interconnected threat environment we've ever seen."
The number of state-threat investigations undertaken by MI5 has risen by 48 in the past year, with Iran, Russia and, China the main perpetrators, McCallum told journalists at the U.K.'s counterterrorism command center in London
