Iran's intelligence services made at least ten attempts to kidnap or even kill British nationals or individuals based in the UK regarded by Tehran as a threat, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency (MI5) has said.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said Wednesday that while Tehran was using violence to silence critics at home, its "aggressive intelligence services" also directly projected a threat to Britain.
"At its sharpest, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime," McCallum said in a speech at MI5's headquarters.
McCallum added that Iran's intelligence services were a "sophisticated adversary" who sometimes operated using their staff or courted others to work on their behalf and was sometimes ready to take a "reckless action," according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
Tehran, which said Mahsa Amini died after suffering from medical complications due to preexisting health conditions, accuses Western countries of stoking unrest to destabilize the regime.
"We have seen at least ten such potential threats since January alone,” Reuters quoted McCallum as saying.
"The current wave of protests in Iran is asking fundamental questions of the totalitarian regime," McCallum said. "This could signal profound change, but the trajectory is uncertain."
Last week, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly summoned Iran's top diplomat to London over alleged threats by Tehran's security forces to journalists in the UK.
Iranian-born wrestling champion Melika Balali, 22, announced that she, too, received death threats.
Balali, currently residing in Scotland, protested against the forced wearing of the hijab on the winner's platform of the British Wrestling Championships in June.
Tehran and London have recently engaged in debates over the imprisonment of British citizens in Iran, most notably Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released in March after being imprisoned for six years in Tehran.
