Russia and Iran are behind spike in terror plots, MI5 spy chief says

The UK is facing an uptick of assassination attempts on its soil by Russia and Iran, the head of the domestic intelligence agency Ken McCallum said in a rare public speech given on Tuesday.

McCallum called the increase in assassination attempts “staggering,” saying that the number of state-threat investigations undertaken by the MI5 had risen by 48% in the past year.

He added that Russia and Iran often recruited criminals, from international drug traffickers to “low-level crooks,” to carry out attacks on their behalf.

The agency chief singled out Iran as a major threat to the UK, saying agents had tackled 20 serious Tehran-backed plots since 2022 — the year Mahsa Amini died in Iranian police custody after allegedly removing her headscarf, sparking protests across the globe.

He said that the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, including Iran’s attack on Israel, had the potential to increase “Iranian state aggression in the UK”.

In his speech, McCallum said that the proliferation of conflict in the Middle East, including Israel’s hostilities with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, had not yet directly led to terror attacks in the UK but had the potential to develop into a threat over time.

McCallum outlined that hostile states, individual attackers and particularly a revived Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State group, who claimed responsibility for an attack on a Moscow concert hall in March, created a complex and “interconnected threat environment.”

On Russia, McCallum pointed to Russia’s military intelligence agency, GRU, which he accused of using mechanisms such as arson and sabotage to create mayhem in Britain and other European countries.

The UK’s official terror threat level is currently “substantial” on a five-point scale, meaning that an attack is regarded as likely.

Three-quarters of terror plots in the UK stem from Islamic extremist ideology and a quarter from the extreme right. However, McCallum said that the range of ideologies was larger, with a number stemming from online hatred and conspiracy theories.

“The first 20 years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats,” McCallum said. “We now face those alongside state-backed assassination and sabotage plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war.”