Iran sleeper agents could be sizing up British targets for sabotage and subversion as war rages in the Middle East, a top security expert has warned. Brits are urged to remain vigilant against the threat of Iranian-backed terror and cyber attacks on home soil.
And top defence expert Professor Anthony Glees said Iranian agent may have been behind the be assassination attempts on US President Donald Trump.
He told the Daily Star that while Brits are safe from Iranian missiles, we “are right now being sized up as possible targets for sabotage and subversion”, adding: “The Iranian secret services are vicious and effective.”
He further explained: “Yes, they are Shia and not Sunni Muslims and most British Muslims are Sunni and not Shia. But even though Shia and Sunni hate each other (as we saw in the Iran-Iraq war) they hate ‘the West’ even more.
And, sadly, there will be fertile ground for Shia Islamist extremism here in the UK but also in the USA.
“If the FBI did not have a playboy running it who spends more time on chilling with other spooks or his lady friend than protecting the USA, I think we’d find widespread subversion in America and I would not be surprised if Iranian agents were not behind some of the assassination attempts on Trump.”
It comes after security experts raised concern that Iran’s shadowy network of military units and “sleeper agents” sympathisers are primed for action.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has reportedly issued a stark warning to British businesses, urging them to beef up defences after US-Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The NCSC said: “Organisations should prepare to respond to Iran-linked hacktivists.” And top security analysts say Iran’s influence may already be active within our borders, The Sun reported.
Dr Andreas Krieg, a security professor at King’s College London, told The Sun: “Periods of heightened confrontation create incentives for Tehran to demonstrate reach. A leadership shake-up can trigger riskier signalling if decision-makers feel threatened.”
He added: “In the UK context, the more credible risk is that such individuals contribute to surveillance of dissidents, intimidation and coercion.” Dr Krieg further warned that individuals with ties to Iran’s notorious Basij militia could be operating on UK soil, even if they’re not in uniform.
He said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) uses people with “Basij ties, sympathies, or past service who can be leveraged for low-visibility tasks”. Dr Krieg warned that as tensions escalate, the risk of Iranian operations, including surveillance, harassment, and disruption of opposition figures in Britain, will likely intensify, with actors potentially interpreting vague orders more aggressively.
Cyber experts, like Rafe Pilling of Sophos X-Ops, say Iranian hackers have become increasingly aggressive, relying on social engineering and multi-stage phishing campaigns to infect victims through emails, chat apps, and social media, as per The Sun. Pilling also highlighted the growing threat of Iranian hackers hijacking messaging accounts such as Telegram, using stolen credentials to expand their reach and influence across victims’ networks.
The NCSC says Iranian hackers have previously targeted “Industrial Control Systems”. The digital brains behind our water, gas and electricity supplies, but Pilling reckons the UK’s “extra safety layers” are currently holding firm.
Furthermore, Phil Cotter of SmartSearch explained that Iran’s IRGC relies on long-established criminal networks and proxies to carry out cyber operations, making attribution difficult and enabling plausible deniability. He stressed that these attacks are often funded through complex money laundering schemes involving criminal intermediaries, rather than direct state channels.
Experts consequently also urge financial institutions to ramp up vigilance and screening to disrupt these illicit money flows, as Iran’s regime poses a direct and growing threat to British national security.
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