LONDON | Iran is trying to hit military sites in Britain and the suspected plot to attack a U.S.-run military air base in September is “not unique,” the head of the MI5 spy agency said Tuesday, as he warned that both Tehran and Moscow are expanding their attacks.
Ken McCallum, who leads Britain’s domestic security service, said Tehran is seeking to intensify its attacks in Britain beyond the traditional targets of Iranians opposed to the country’s Islamic authorities.
That has included arson and sabotage attacks on Jewish sites that Britain says were carried out by Iranian proxies.
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Mr. McCallum said another “major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites.”
The incident at RAF Fairford “is not unique. There have been other examples, not just in the U.K. but around the world,” he said.
His comments came as Iran summoned British Ambassador Hugo Shorter to warn it could “seriously reconsider” bilateral relations unless Britain provides evidence linking Tehran to the alleged plot. Tehran told the ambassador it was protesting what it called Britain’s “irresponsible and destructive approach.”
“The British government must provide documents and evidence supporting its accusations against Iran,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
Mr. McCallum delivered his annual speech outlining major threats to Britain as counterterror detectives investigate a suspected terror plot against the U.S.-run base in western England, which has been used to bomb Iran during this year’s war.
Scores of residents were evacuated from their homes near the base on Sept. 27 as armed police officers and army bomb-disposal experts swarmed the rural area. Police later said they had found a quantity of an accelerant — gasoline — in three vans at the site, but no explosives.
Seven men in their 20s have been arrested and released on bail under investigation. In all, more than 50 people have been arrested over Iran-linked plots in the past year, Mr. McCallum said.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Monday that the apparent plot was “almost certainly” directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, or IRGC. Iran has denied involvement, although it has previously said that it considers any base used to attack its territory a legitimate target.
The U.S. pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford after the incident, and the Trump administration said it believed the base faced Iranian threats intended to kill as many American troops and destroy as many U.S. planes as possible.
In a stark speech, Mr. McCallum said his agency’s work countering state threats — chiefly from Russia, Iran and China — has quadrupled in the past decade, and claimed that both Russia and Iran are escalating hybrid warfare campaigns against the U.K. and other European countries.
He said Russia has been linked to attacks including an attempt to use an explosives-laden drone at Germany’s Leipzig airport, and is “using tactics that stop short — though sometimes not much short — of conventional conflict.
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