A ‘VULNERABLE’ IRAN may activate a network of sleeper cells across the West in the face of the Israeli bombing campaign, experts have warned.
With its military and leading Islamist figures on the defensive, analysts suggest that a weakened Iran might turn to asymmetric terror tactics to create chaos among its adversaries.
It has now been more than a week since Israel began pounding Iran’s nuclear facilities and other military targets.
The objective, according to Israeli sources, is to hinder Iran’s attempts to develop nuclear arms, as well as additional ballistic missiles, including those with long-range capabilities that can strike well beyond Israeli borders.
While Iran has been responding by launching frequent salvos of ballistic missiles, its top military command has been decapitated.
And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been forced to live in underground bunkers.
Experts now fear that a vicious Iran could awaken its network of sleeper cells to carry out terror plots across the West.
Barak Seener, a security and defense specialist from the Henry Jackson Society and an expert on Iran, stated: “The current instability within the Iranian regime, coupled with its vulnerability, actually heightens its potential threat to Western nations.”
Iran’s murderous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is thought to run an extensive network of sleeper cells across the world.
Mr Seener said that these sleeper cells could be regular people living regular lives.
But when given the signal, they could carry out terrorist activities targeting the West.
These terror operations could target public infrastructure and even civilians, with no weapons off the table, experts warn.
The sleeper cells could even carry out assassination attempts on top leaders that could throw the world into chaos.
Last year, an Iranian agent was charged with plotting to kill Donald Trump in an assassination that would have shaken the world.
US prosecutors say the rogue state told ex-con Farhad Shakeri — said to be hiding in Tehran — to devise a seven-day plan to spy on and murder him.
Prosecutors said an official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told Shakeri to devise a plan to eliminate the President elect.
They claim the planned hit was an attempt to take vengeance for a US drone strike ordered by Trump that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, then said to be the world’s No1 terrorist, in 2020.
Trump’s former security advisor, John Bolton, said the US President is “at the top” of an “assassination list” from the Middle East nation.
Mr Seener said: “They live amongst us in regular communities, have regular jobs, and they just are awaiting being activated to conduct malign activities, whether it be through a telephone text or a beeper, and then they already know what they are going to be doing.
“If the regime feels threatened and on the verge of being toppled, then they may say, ‘you’re going to go down with us,’ and at that point they may unleash their sleeper cells.”
In an op-ed for The Sun, expert Mark Almond wrote: “Iran’s Islamic regime is a dangerous, wounded predator.
“It cannot defeat Israel, but it could go mad and unleash terrorism, even using chemical weapons, which its industries can make much more easily than nuclear weapons.”
Mr Seener said the attacks could range from an attack against a synagogue, an embassy, or blowing up a dirty bomb in Central London.
Sir Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned back in October that Iran could turn on UK targets if it felt Britain was too enthusiastic in its support for Israel.
He said the attacks could increase if the Middle East conflict intensifies.
In August, Matt Jukes, the head of Counter Terror Policing, warned that Britain is facing an increase in plots by hostile states.
He said Iranian dissidents and diaspora communities have been “clearly at risk of kidnapping or assassination”.
“These are people who are doing it daily. And when you are projecting soft power, you’re creating the cultural milieu in which terrorism can be conducted much more readily.
Counterterror police have investigated 15 of these cases alongside MI5.
MI5 has responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022, it was reported.
Mr Seener said: “The reason why the Irgc can act with impunity, and why British citizens are at risk, is because of the British Government’s unwillingness and failure to designate the Irgc as a terrorist organisation.
“It means that they are able to conduct activities and infiltrate mosques, charities, community centres, cultural centres, and many of them, their directorship has been directly appointed by the supreme leader, Khamenei.”
“British Shias go on pilgrimages to religious sites in Iran and Iraq. They are targeted by the IRGC and recruited, so that when they return to the UK, they can conduct surveillance on potential targets.”
Iran’s terror on UK street
By Sayan Bose, Foreign News Reporter
Iran-fuelled hit squads on the streets of the UK have been linked to at least 15 threats to kill or kidnap detected by authorities.
They are all part of a campaign of intimidation aimed at those who speak out against the hardline regime.
The MI5 has accused Tehran of more than a dozen assassination and kidnap plots in Britain against dissidents and media organisations in the past two years.
Officials have previously warned that the threat against Iranian critics living in the UK has ramped up drastically after the horror October 7 attacks.
And given the hostile situation in the Middle East, Iran could ramp up its secret terror activities in the UK, Europe and the US, experts fear.
In 2022, Major Gen Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC warned: “You’ve tried us before. Watch out because we’re coming for you.”
Last year, Iranian TV journalist Pouria Zeraati was stabbed outside his home in London, sparking an investigation led by counter-terrorism police.
The suspects were believed to be proxy agents hired by Tehran.
Mr Zeraati works for Iran International, a London-based Persian-speaking channel which has reported on Iran’s human rights violations.
He said a man approached him and asked for £3 before another man appeared and stabbed him in the leg.
The two fled in a car being driven by a third man, leaving Mr Zeraati bleeding in the street.
Investigators believed the three culprits were able to flee the country on a flight from Heathrow within hours of the attack.
Mr Zeraati, whose organisation has been a vocal critic of Iran, said the attack was a “warning shot” from Tehran.
He called on the UK government to declare the IRGC a terrorist group to stop it from spreading its doctrine.
He said: “It will also send a clear message to the regime in Iran that enough is enough.
“The whole of Western civilisation is in danger because of the threat the IRGC poses.”
A report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found almost half of journalists who covered Iran from the UK reported being physically or verbally harassed in the past five years.
Individuals have been sent death threats by text and voice notes, with one message noting that the “water underneath Westminster Bridge was very deep”.
One said they were constantly worried about Iran targeting their children, saying: “I wake up in the middle of the night. I check my son to see if he’s there. I won’t let him play in the garden on his own. I have to be there. I’m on alert constantly.”
Another reporter told the RSF she had a package, which was designed to look like it contained anthrax, hand-delivered to her apartment block.
While female TV journalist was approached on a London bus by a man who told her: “We will kill you. You are a very bad person.”
All of them are understood to have voiced their dissent against Tehran.
The IRGC is the principal supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are proscribed in the UK.
Amid threats of all-out war in the Middle East, officials last year wanted to expedite tightening domestic terror laws to ban IRGC operatives from nurturing Islamist terrorism at home.
Current sanctions on Iran do not prevent state-linked organisations spreading jihadi propaganda or carrying out soft-power activities designed to radicalize British citizens.
Kasra Aarabi, Director of IRGC Research at United Against Nuclear Iran, said: “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the most antisemitic armed Islamist extremist organisation in the world.
“The government needs to proscribe the IRGC as a matter of urgency.
“The failure to proscribe the IRGC is putting British lives at risk, not least those from the British-Jewish community and British-Iranian diaspora —the two primary targets of IRGC terrorism in the UK.”
