Iran could “repurpose” its criminal network and attack Britons if the conflict with Israel continued to worsen, Ken McCallum, director-general of MI5 has warned.
McCallum said that MI5 was “powerfully alive to the risk that events in the Middle East directly trigger terrorist action in the UK. We haven’t — yet — seen this translate at scale into terrorist violence.”
Iran was behind “plot after plot” in the UK in the past two years, he said, including five new Iran-backed plots uncovered by MI5 and police this year.
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Director General of the Security Service (MI5) Ken McCallum
He said Tehran “could, in principle, try to repurpose” efforts on other targets in the UK if it felt that Britain had become too aligned with Israel.
In his annual threat briefing at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre, McCallum also warned about the resurgence of Islamic State to export terrorism to the West and carry out “mass murder.”
He said the “worsening threat” from IS and to a lesser extent al-Qaida was “the terrorist trend that concerns me most”.
The spy chief also warned about the growing number of increasingly young individuals being attracted by extremists, including that of Islamist and far-right groups, adding:”“We’re seeing far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism.”
McCallum said it was not proven that Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon had caused a rise in terror plots but he noted “rising public order, hate crime and community safety challenges.”
He said “ripples from conflict in that region will not necessarily arrive at our shores in a straightforward fashion” citing outside influences.
The spy boss also said Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”,
