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A London-based TV station backs one of the world’s most hostile regimes \u2014 and Ofcom is powerless to stop it | <\/p>\nFor the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the world\u2019s most hostile regimes, Britain remains something of an obsession. Even as we lost our empire and stopped being a superpower, Iran still sees us as the key player behind the scenes, pulling the strings of the Americans and the West generally.<\/p>\n
In the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country\u2019s supreme leader, Britain is Iran\u2019s \u201cmost treacherous\u201d enemy. Iranian TV broadcasts a soap opera that features real British diplomats as characters and calls the British embassy in Tehran a \u201cnest of spies\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s flattering, in a way, that they take us so seriously. But it\u2019s also increasingly dangerous. As the government\u2019s independent counter-terror adviser, Jonathan Hall, warns, Britain now faces an \u201cextraordinary\u201d threat from Iran. In the three years to 2024, there were 15 attempts by Iranian agents to kidnap or kill people in this country. <\/p>\n
That was bad enough. But the pace has dramatically accelerated. Twenty \u201cpotentially lethal\u201d plots have been tracked by MI5 over the last year alone.<\/p>\n
Most of those plots are against anti-regime Iranians in the UK, such as journalists for the opposition TV station, Iran International. <\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t mean the rest of us are safe. As Parliament\u2019s Intelligence and Security Committee has said, Iran has \u201cdemonstrated a willingness to conduct attacks using methodologies which would be highly likely to result in significant collateral damage to individuals in the area\u201d, such as bombings, and Iran has been \u201clinked to preparations for a wider physical attack in the UK\u2026the impacts of which would potentially not be limited to the dissident community\u201d.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, police and MI5 raided five houses in London, seizing 20,000 first aid kits. Each kit included an ice pack, which contained the explosive precursor, ammonium nitrate. <\/p>\n
Fewer than ten packs were needed to produce a small explosive device. As the Intelligence and Security Committee said: \u201cMI5 assessed that Lebanese Hizbollah [a terror group closely linked to Iran] was stockpiling as part of its contingency planning should Iran or Lebanese Hizbollah judge that an attack was necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
GB News\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Sometimes the British state seems to be across the threat. But perhaps more often, it\u2019s oddly lax. <\/p>\n