In his annual address on the threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum, director-general of MI5, said Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services” had switched to terrorist attacks on British soil. In a sweeping assessment, Mr McCallum said Russia’s spy network had “taken the most significant blow … in recent European history” as a result of entrenched international opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He said 400 Russian spies had been expelled from European countries since the start of the war and that the UK alone had refused 100 applications for diplomatic visas for Russia on “national security grounds”. Mr McCallum said that since the summer, when he issued a chilling warning about China’s “game-changing strategic challenge” to the UK, MI5 had seen “even more worrying activity” involving the “harassment and assault” of Chinese dissidents living in Britain. Mr McCallum also revealed that eight “potentially lethal” terror plots by both Islamists and far-right extremists had been foiled in the past 12 months. A quarter of MI5’s counter-terrorism work now involves investigating and disrupting far-right plots compared with a fifth of its caseload just over a year ago.
Iran’s intelligence services ‘a sophisticated adversary’
Mr McCallum’s warning about Iran follows the revelation last week that two Anglo-Iranian journalists working for an independent UK-based Persian television channel had been targeted for assassination by the Tehran regime. Mr McCallum said Iran was the “state actor that most often crosses over into terrorism” calling Tehran’s intelligence services a “sophisticated adversary”. The current wave of protests had prompted the regime to “resort to violence to silence critics”, Mr McCallum said, adding: “Iran poses threats to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services. “At its most extreme, this includes aspirations to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals deemed enemies of the regime. “We’ve seen at least 10 such potential threats since January alone.”
The Chinese are using ‘all the means at their disposal’
Mr McCallum said the Chinese authorities were using “every means at their disposal to monitor – and where they deem necessary to intimidate – the Chinese diaspora”. “This is happening all over the world, from the coercion and forcible repatriation of Chinese nationals to harassment and assault.” He said the intimidation tactics “recently returned … when a pro-democracy protester appeared to be the subject of violence outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester”, referring to an incident last month in which an opponent of Xi Jinping’s regime was dragged off the street and beaten within the premises of the consulate.
