According to the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, since 2022, MI5 agents and the British police have stopped 20 planned assassinations involving Iranian-backed actors.
He warns that Iran could implement its actions in the UK if Israel attacks Iran after last week’s rocket attack.
McCallum says “we’ve seen plan after plan here in the UK, at a speed and scale never seen before”.
The head of MI5 gave information to the British people on Tuesday about the dangers of both hostile states and terrorist groups. He said there is also a risk that Israel’s conflict with Iran-backed militia groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen could lead to terrorist attacks in the UK.
Almost 50 percent more cases
MI5 has dealt with 48 per cent more cases of hostile foreign activity in the UK in the past year, according to McCallum.
He identifies Iran, Russia and China as the main actors.
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Russian intelligence is trying to use “arson, sabotage and other methods” to create chaos on the streets of both Britain and other European countries, according to McCallum.
He says that both Russia and Iran often hire criminals to carry out attacks for them.
Most likely with terrorist attacks
The terrorist threat is assessed in the UK as “significant”. It is rated three out of five on the scale which means that a terrorist attack is considered likely.
Since 2017, British authorities have foiled 43 terrorist plots that were in the final stages of planning, according to McCallum.
Radical Islamists are behind three-quarters of them, and far-right radical groups are behind a quarter, he says. He also says that these labels do not fully reflect the level of “beliefs and ideologies that we see”. This is fueled by “online hate, conspiracy theories and disinformation,” McCallum said.
2024-10-08 14:06:40
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