Counter-terrorist detectives investigating a stabbing of a dissident Iranian journalist in London have discovered that three suspects left the country within hours of the attack. Pouria Zeraati, 36, a presenter for Iran International, was knifed in the leg outside his home in Wimbledon on Friday. The suspects fled the scene to Heathrow before boarding a flight. Police are keeping an open mind about any potential motivation for the attack but the chief suspects are operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iran has a long history of targeting those they believe are threatening the regime, but the last two years have seen a peak in threats to dissidents living overseas. Since 2022, counter-terrorism police in Britain have issued at least 15 ‘threat to life’ warnings over plots to kidnap or kill Iranian dissidents. Individuals are given an ‘acute’, ‘moderate’ or ‘low’ risk and offered protective security advice by police according to the risk of physical harm.

Counter-terrorism police in Britain have issued at least 15 ‘threat to life’ warnings

Across Europe and North America, Iranian intelligence is involved in information collecting, luring targets to nearby countries, as well as plotting kidnappings and assassinations. However, since Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat, was arrested for planning an attack on a rally by the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) outside Paris in 2018, the Iranians have increasingly relied on criminal proxies, although they have proved less than reliable.

Iran International regularly broadcasts highly-critical reports in Persian about the Iranian authorities and its alleged human rights violations. It attracted particular controversy in Iran following reporting on protests by women after the death in detention of Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten by police for not wearing a head covering.

Following their reporting of the protests around Amini’s death, in November 2022 Iran declared the TV station to be a terrorist organisation. Iran’s state media subsequently reported that those who worked for Iran International were ‘wanted’ by Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence.

Security was stepped up at the TV channel’s London base on a business park in Chiswick, West London in December 2022, following a tip-off that there had been surveillance of a senior employee’s house. Police later discovered operatives had taken videos of the business park – including one recorded during a visit by Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, one of Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officers.

The footage was found on the phone of Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, a Chechen-born Iranian spy, who was caught when security guards spotted his suspicious behaviour and called in armed police in February last year. Police discovered that Dovtaev had arrived at Gatwick on an early-morning flight from Vienna to conduct further surveillance. The hapless 31-year-old drank four pints of beer at an airport pub before catching a taxi straight to the TV station’s HQ.

Security sources say Dovtaev was a member of a Russian organised crime group, used as a ‘cut out’ by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Investigators still do not know if Dovtaev was to be used to carry out an attack, or even if he knew anything about what was planned by others. Despite attempts to get him to talk, he has refused to cooperate.

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, who is now heading the Zeraati investigation, said at the time: ‘The reality is we do see them very regularly using proxies and we have, in the past, and around Europe, seen evidenced examples of the Iranian state using criminal proxies’.

In Europe and the US, Iran has targeted dissidents, including politicians, often using criminal proxies to do so. Masih Alinejad, a journalist in New York, was targeted on her doorstep by a man with an AK-47 in July 2022. John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, was allegedly targeted for assassination in October 2021 in retaliation for the killing by the Americans of General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Quds Force.

For a plot to attack a Jewish school and synagogue in Germany, Iran reportedly used the Hell’s Angels. Iran’s proxies have also included members of the Zindashti criminal network, who are said to be involved in kidnappings in Turkey on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, and in return are allowed to control drug smuggling in Iran.

Police are remaining tight lipped about what else they know about the attack on Zeraati. But the continued involvement of SO15, the Met’s counter-terrorism command, in the investigation shows how seriously the authorities are taking this brutal attack.