In his annual speech at the organization’s headquarters in London, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said, “In the past year, the number of people under investigation in England for threatening activities related to foreign governments has increased by 35 percent.” In a part of his speech, he claimed, without providing specific evidence, that his organization “together […]
In his annual speech at the organization’s headquarters in London, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said, “In the past year, the number of people under investigation in England for threatening activities related to foreign governments has increased by 35 percent.”
In a part of his speech, he claimed, without providing specific evidence, that his organization “together with the police forces, has dealt with 20 potentially deadly plans related to Iran”. This security official makes such claims while none of these cases have been publicly presented or proven in the British judicial system or media.
Pointing to what he called a “new era of security threats”, McCallum claimed that his country is now facing a “combination of terrorist and state threats” and added: “State actors including China, Russia and Iran are using methods that were previously only seen in terrorist cases.” He also claimed, without giving details, that British intelligence agencies are dealing with attempts to spy, sabotage and create insecurity in the country’s critical infrastructure on a daily basis.
In another part of his speech, the head of MI5, emphasizing that “Britain has entered a new period of threats”, said: “I have never experienced such a volume and variety of terrorist and state threats in my entire career.” In the end, without mentioning the name of a specific country, he warned that his organization “will never back down from dealing with threats”.
These statements come a few days after the British government issued new security instructions to expand the foreign influence countering plan (FIRS), which Iran is at the “advanced” level, from the legislative phase to the executive and strategic phase. This directive, which was issued in the framework of the “National Security Law”, provides a series of warnings and protection recommendations for parliamentarians, members of the House of Lords, local councils and election candidates at the country level.
The Islamic Republic of Iran rejected the security claims and described it as a “conscious projection” by a party that has a long history of harmful interventions against the Iranian nation. Esmail Beqaei, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said earlier that London is still hosting and supporting anti-Iranian terrorist groups and elements, and instead of insisting on confrontational policies, it should stop making baseless accusations and stop supporting terrorism.
