By Pishtaz | 2025-03-20

Britain has introduced a new requirement that all persons working inside the country for the Iranian regime, its intelligence services or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) register on a government list.

Violators face up to five years imprisonment.

The measure, announced March 4, places the Islamic Republic on an enhanced tier of Britain's new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, security minister Dan Jarvis told the British parliament.

He described the scheme as a critical tool to disrupt state-sponsored threats.

The government also will explore additional sanctions against Iranian-linked criminals, while the National Crime Agency targets those who help the IRGC, the minister said.

The Home Office aims to have the registration scheme operational by summer, following parliamentary approval of the regulations.

"The regime has become increasingly emboldened, asserting itself more aggressively to advance their objectives and undermine ours," Jarvis said.

He noted that proof of the Iranian regime's direct action against targets in the United Kingdom has "substantially increased" in recent years.

Criminal proxies across Europe

Intelligence assessments show Iranian state actors increasingly use criminal proxies for attacks and surveillance across Europe.

Since January 2022, British authorities have disrupted 20 Iranian-backed plots presenting "potentially lethal" threats to residents of the United Kingdom, according to MI5 director Gen. Ken McCallum.

"Iranian state actors make extensive use of criminals as proxies -– from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks," he said.

The plots have particularly targeted Iranian dissidents, media organizations, journalists and Jewish communities in the United Kingdom, a pattern that extends beyond its borders.

Iranian agents have recruited European criminals via drug traffickers based in Iran to conduct surveillance of Jewish targets in Paris, Munich and Berlin in recent months, investigators in Germany and France revealed.

In Sweden, the recently US-sanctioned Foxtrot gang and other organized criminal groups carried out attacks on Israeli diplomatic facilities at Tehran's behest, the Hague-based International Center for Counter Terrorism said.

"The Iranian services have adapted their modus operandi and now more systematically prefer to use people from criminal circles" to carry out attacks abroad, the French domestic intelligence service DGSI said.

Under Britain's new measures, anyone directed by Tehran to conduct activities in the United Kingdom must register that activity or face criminal charges.

"They will face a choice -- expose their actions to the government or face jail," Jarvis told parliament.

"These threats are unacceptable and will be defended against at every turn," he said, pledging that Britain would work with allies to "bring Iranian-linked criminals to justice wherever in the world they may be."