Iran’s UK Spies Threatened to Kidnap Journalist’s Children

A BBC Persian reporter said the threat was among a number she received from the Tehran regime

BBC Broadcasting House in London on Jan. 21, 2020. Ian West/PA Media

Iranian spies working in the UK threatened to kidnap the children of a female journalist, she has alleged.

BBC Persian reporter Rana Rahimpour was told that Tehran operatives in Britain would target her young children during school pick-up time, she has revealed.

The Iranian-born London journalist said she was also threatened with rape and beheading over her reporting of activities in Iran, including protests in the wake Mahsa Amini’s death.

She is one of a number of journalists and UK-based individuals who have been warned that their safety is at risk after MI5 said that Iran has attempted to carry out 15 kidnap and death plots in the country since the start of 2022.

Speaking on the podcast “Londongrad: Iran’s Hit Squads” Rahimpour said she can no longer live a normal life in London as she remains under threat by Iran.

“That is the moment I realised, OK, my life in London that I used to think was safe, is no longer the same.

“I no longer go to Iranian events, I don’t go to concerts.

“I don’t go to Iranian supermarkets on my own because at this stage we have to try to stay safe as much as we can of course.”

Speaking of the moment she was told her children would be targeted by Iran, she told the podcast: “They said if they want to hurt me, one way to do it is to rearrange children’s pickup and kidnap your kids.

“And they said it’s very easy for them, for the operatives.

“Other things like if you receive post, you have to double check before you open any post, things that you don’t even think about.”

Anti-Iranian government activists hold a vigil outside Downing Street in London, on Jan. 10, 2020. Peter Summers/Getty Images

2 Hours to Get Out

In February, London-based news station Iran International was forced to suspend its operations after counterterrorism police told its news director that they could no longer be protected within the UK.

The station’s staff and journalists—who have also faced serious threats from Iran—were forced to move the news channel to Washington, D.C.

The Home Office is currently looking for a secure location for the station to return to and continue broadcasting within the UK.

Iran International News Director Aliasghar Ramezanpour received two threat-to-life warnings from the Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism team, which works with MI5.

He told of the moment specialist police said the station could no longer safely work in Britain owing to threats from a foreign state.

“It was exactly 4:30 p.m. that I received a call from our security saying that we need to stop operation in the building and we need to ask everyone to leave the building,” he told the podcast.

“I received many messages from journalists, our team, what’s happening? The level of concern that they have.

“They had concerns about their families and about themselves.”

Ramezanpour said his staff were given just two hours to vacate the building.

He was unable to allay staff concerns that their families, also in the UK, were also targets.

He added, “It happened in Iran 20 years ago, and when it happened here in London, I was thinking what’s happening?”

Speaking in November, MI5’s Director General Ken McCallum gave a rare public statement on the threat Iran posed to the UK.

He said: “Iran projects threat to the UK directly through its aggressive intelligence services.

“At its sharpest, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime.

“We’ve seen at least 10 such potential threats since January alone.

“The UK will not tolerate intimidation or threats to life towards journalists, or any individual living in the UK.”

Demonstrators at Trafalgar Square in London on Sunday Jan. 8, 2023. The protest against the Islamic Republic in Iran followed the death of Mahsa Amini. Aaron Chown/PA

A Plot a Month

Since then, the security services have confirmed that they have foiled at least five more violent plots by the Iranian regime.

The figures amount to at least one assassination or abduction attempt a month in the UK by the hostile state.

Matthew Dunn, a former intelligence officer at MI6, said he believes that the real figure of Iran’s attempts to silence its critics in Britain is actually far higher.

“I would, if anything, suggest that’s quite a low number compared to the reality,” he told the Londongrad podcast.

“I would suggest that the reason that this seems as though it’s a new thing is probably in part to do with a tentative step towards a little bit more openness from MI5.

“And so you’re seeing some information coming out that otherwise wouldn’t have done previously. But the numbers you’re giving me do not surprise me at all, and as I say, I think probably they’re on the low side.”

In September last year, Iran’s morality police arrested young Sunni Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

While in custody, she fell into a coma and died three days later.

When the authorities claimed she died of natural causes, protests erupted across Iran with many held by British–Iranians in the UK.

BBC Persian was one of the first outlets to interview Amini’s father.

Rahimpour told podcast presenter Paul Caruana Galizia how during the live telephone interview, Amini father’s phone line was tampered with, to the point the journalist could no longer carry on with the interview.

“So specifically since the protests that started after the death of Mahsa Amini the threats increased,” she said.

“But since her death and the protests and specifically my role in the coverage of those protests, wiretapping was completely new.

“And it’s likely that it happened before but another scenario is that Iran got the capability more recently to do that, because they’re very close with Russia and China and they’re constantly exchanging technologies and surveillance technologies.

“So it seems that they are getting better and better at organising these attacks.”

Candles and pictures of Mahsa Amini are placed at a memorial during a candlelight vigil for Mahsa Amini who died in custody of Iran's morality police, in Los Angeles Sept. 29, 2022. Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images

Malign Activity

Caruana Galizia, whose mother, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, was murdered by a car bomb in 2017, suggests that the UK has become soft on Iran.

He accused Britain of tolerating the regime’s “malign activity” in a hope that it will “liberalise and become a more stable partner in the Gulf.”

He added: “In the same way that it held onto the hope that Russia would democratise its politics and liberalise, now that Iran’s problems have changed, its targets in Britain have changed.

“The threat in Britain is no longer from political dissidents but from Iranian journalists who broadcast in Persian.”

Britain’s Minister for Security Tom Tugendhat has come under mounting pressure from fellow Tory politicians to proscribe the military arm of Iran, suspected of being behind the threats, assassination, and abduction plots.

However, he has so far failed to commit to outlawing the terror-linked Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Epoch Times previously revealed how at least 14 foreign sanctioned commercial and financial institutions linked to the Iran regime have bases in the UK.

Oil companies, insurance firms, and even consultancy services—all blacklisted by the United States over terror fears—currently operate out of a number of central London premises.

The presence of the Tehran-linked companies was described as a “huge concern” by experts who said the British government is waning in its response to serious security fears raised over Iran’s UK outposts.