Two men have been found guilty of helping Tehran's intelligence service as experts warned the Iran threat to the UK is escalating.
Mostafa Sepahvand and Farhad Javadi Manesh were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court which heard how they planned attacks against Iranian journalists and lawyers.
Surveillance and reconnaissance
Sepahvand, 41, carried out surveillance and reconnaissance between August 2024 and March last year in a bid to inflict violence on "subjects" in the UK.
Targets included journalists for London-based Persian broadcaster Iran International, Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini, and a founder member of UK Lawyers for Israel, Jonathan Turner.
Both Iranian men were accused of visiting addresses linked to their targets, taking photos and videos, and using platforms such as ChatGPT to research them online.
Prosecution case
The prosecution said Sepahvand intended to physically carry out a "violent attack" against at least one of the targets, while Farhad Javadi Manesh assisted in planning.
Sepahvand lent forward and held his head in his hands when they were found guilty on Thursday after a trial at Woolwich Crown Court.
A third defendant Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, was cleared of the same charge after jurors deliberated for 19 hours and nine minutes.
Manesh and Noori were acquitted of engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance, with the intention that serious violence against a person in the UK would be committed by others.
Prosecutor's statement
Frank Ferguson, chief Crown prosecutor of the CPS's Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said: "This was a calculated operation to spy on those critical of the Iranian regime.
"Sepahvand and Manesh were promised rewards to send intelligence back to contacts in Iran, and Sepahvand himself was willing to go beyond surveillance to commit serious violence against their targets.
"Thankfully, the defendants were stopped before any attack could take place.
"Cases like this show Iranian intelligence's willingness to use proxies to target the regime's critics abroad.
"The CPS is alive to these ever-evolving threats and, through our work with Counter Terrorism Policing, stands ready to prosecute any hostile actors who might try and jeopardise our country's security."
First National Security Act prosecution
This is the first example of counter-terrorism policing using the National Security Act to prosecute Iranian nationals in the UK accused of spying on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to police.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP), told the Press Association: "We know that Iran has a desire to project threat here into the UK.
"We have seen an increase in the threat from some foreign states, Iran included, and a desire to reach in and conduct sabotage, espionage activity here in the UK."
Other prosecutions include the jailing of two men for stabbing Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati outside his home in Wimbledon, south London, in March 2024 and the imprisonment of a man for spying on Iran International before a "planned attack" on British soil in February 2023.
Ms Evans said the increase in interest from Iran - which is at war with the United States and which has been involved in conflict with Israel - comes amid "huge instability internationally".
She also said actors are "broadening" who they might target.
"The breadth of the threat is certainly broadening, but our efforts equally broaden and widen to ensure that we are preventing that type of activity."
