UK spy chief warns Iran is targeting military sites

Iran is seeking to target military sites in Britain, marking a shift in its suspected operations there, the head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday. His warning followed an incident near an airbase used by US bombers to strike Iran, which Britain’s prime minister has linked to Tehran. Iran denies involvement.

MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum said Iranian operations had previously used criminal proxies to intimidate opposition figures, Iranian media organizations and Israeli sites. “Sadly, much of this aggression has been aimed at British Jewish communities, with whom I want to express solidarity,” he said in his annual threat update in London.

“The other major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites,” McCallum said. He said intelligence operations had led to more than 50 Iran-linked arrests in Britain over the past year.

McCallum declined to discuss the investigation at RAF Fairford, an airbase in Gloucestershire used by US forces. But, he said, “The RAF Fairford incident … is not unique. There have been other examples, not just in the UK but around the world.”

Police began investigating after three suspicious vans were seen near Fairford on Sept. 27. According to Al Jazeera, officers found petrol in the vans but no explosives. Seven men, including a British-Iranian national, were arrested and later released on bail. None has been charged, Al Jazeera reported.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told lawmakers Monday that the incident was “highly likely to have been coordinated in Iran, almost certainly directed” by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Tehran has rejected accusations that it was involved in the Fairford incident or other harmful activity in Britain.

The United States withdrew its bombers from Fairford after the incident. Two US officials told NBC News the withdrawal followed reports of a possible drone attack against the base. McCallum said the Iran-linked operatives seen in Britain so far had not shown the capability to carry out an attack of that complexity, while cautioning that the IRGC had more sophisticated capabilities in countries closer to Iran.

Al Jazeera reported that Britain also arrested two Latvian men on suspicion of trespassing at RAF Molesworth, a base used by the US military and NATO for intelligence operations. They were released on bail. The outlet reported that Britain sanctioned two Iranians on Monday over alleged hostile activity: Ruhollah Bazghandi, identified as the head of IRGC counterespionage operations, and Shahram Ali Reza Tamarzadeh Jakki, whom British officials described as a facilitator for Iran’s Zindashti criminal network.

McCallum’s assessment extended beyond Iran. He said MI5 was devoting more resources to countering threats from states than it did during the Cold War, and called Russia “aggressor number one.” Moscow’s military and intelligence services were escalating attempts at hybrid warfare, he said.

He also pointed to Chinese espionage and interference, the continuing threat of mass-casualty attacks by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, and the possibility that artificial intelligence could help hostile actors develop more dangerous biological weapons.