According to British officials, a group of Iranian individuals who were reportedly recently arrested in Britain were preparing an attack on the Israeli Embassy in London. This news is expected to increase tensions between Israel and Iran in the region.
Whether the five individuals detained over the weekend have ties to the Iranian regime has not been disclosed by British authorities.
However, in an effort to silence critics of the regime overseas and in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Iranian-backed troops in Lebanon, European security sources have warned that Iran is responsible for an increasing number of plots on foreign land.
The men were taken into custody by British special forces after a series of raids throughout the United Kingdom. Four of them are still being questioned by police, and the fifth was freed on bond.
As part of a separate U.K. national-security investigation, three other Iranian males were also arrested on the same day as the arrests.
The two terrorist operations were described as “some of the biggest counter-state threats” the United Kingdom had encountered in recent years by U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Sunday.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, stated on X that his nation “categorically rejects” any involvement. There was no immediate response from the Israeli authorities.
Iran has a history of planning assaults against Israeli and Jewish sites overseas, typically with the help of squad 840, a clandestine squad under the command of its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran has a degree of deniability because these attacks have frequently been carried out by foreign agents or organized crime groups that Tehran has contracted through middlemen.
Iranian-affiliated organized criminal gangs used two grenades to attack the Israeli Embassy in Brussels last year, according to Israeli espionage agency Mossad.
Swedish police also detained two teens in separate events last year who were accused of planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm on orders from Tehran,
The 2012 explosion on a Bulgarian tourist bus that killed five Israelis was attributed by Bulgarian officials and Europol to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group.
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