Police in London have arrested four men they say were spying for Iran on Jewish community sites, with the likely goal of facilitating attacks against them.
The arrests come as the U.S.-Israel war on Iran ignites concerns about Iran’s sleeper cells abroad, which have long targeted Jewish and Israeli sites as part of the Islamic Republic’s war against the west and Israel.
The head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit, Helen Flanagan, said in a statement that the arrests emerged from “a long-running investigation and part of our ongoing work to disrupt malign activity where we suspect it.”
The men ranged in age from 22 to 55 and all had Iranian citizenship; three of the men were also British citizens. The police did not offer details about which sites the men surveilled or whether they were believed to have any imminent plans to stage an attack.
The Community Service Trust, a British Jewish security agency, thanked the police and said, “Security is strong across the Jewish community.”
Iran is seen as behind some of the biggest attacks on Jewish sites abroad, including the AMIA Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force is the Iranian military division charged with staging attacks abroad abroad.
Following the launch of the war on Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Iran was active in Great Britain.
“Even in the United Kingdom, the Iranian regime poses a direct threat to dissidents and to the Jewish community,” he said. “Over the last year alone, they have backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on UK soil.”
