British police said on Sunday, May 4th, that they had arrested eight people, including seven Iranian nationals, on suspicion of “terrorism offences.”
Britain’s interior minister Yvette Cooper described the arrests, which come amid heightened concerns about Iranian activities on UK soil, as two major operations.
The arrests were carried out in London, Swindon, and the Greater Manchester area.
“These were two major operations that reflect some of the biggest counter state threat and counter terrorism operations that we have seen in recent years,” Cooper said.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that the authorities felt they had been dealing with an imminent attack.
Police said the men, aged between 29 and 46, had been detained by counter terrorism officers on Saturday in relation to “a suspected plot to target a specific premises”—not identified in the statement.
In March, Iran became the first country to be placed on an enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which aims to boost the UK’s national security against covert foreign influences.
The measures, due to come into place later this year, will mean that all persons working inside the UK for Iran, its intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guard, would have to register or face jail.
Last October, the head of Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service revealed that since 2022,
