The head of the British domestic security agency MI5: new threats from Iran and Russia
The warning issued today by Ken McCallum: ‘We have entered a new era for national security’
by Nicol Degli Innocenti
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The UK faces new threats from Iran and Russia, which are stepping up their hostile activities and targeting new sites such as military installations: this was the warning issued today by Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, the UK’s domestic security and counter-intelligence agency. “We have entered a new era for national security,” he said.
Threats from hostile states have quadrupled over the last decade, McCallum said in his annual address updating the situation regarding internal security, which is now more precarious than it was during the Cold War.
Iran has become “more ambitious” in its hybrid warfare campaigns, and MI5 has arrested more than 50 people over the past year, largely in connection with terrorist plots and attacks on synagogues or other centres or businesses run by British Jews.
The accident at Fairford Air Base
McCallum was unable to provide details of the incident at the military base in Fairford in England two weeks ago, as the investigation is still ongoing, but Prime Minister Andy Burnham confirmed that it is “almost certain” that it was an operation orchestrated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The British Royal Air Force base was being used by American military aircraft for raids on Iran, but following the incident, the US withdrew all its aircraft from Fairford. Tehran has denied any involvement in the operation, which led to the arrest of five people, all of whom were subsequently released by the police. “Fairford is not an isolated case,” said McCallum. “There have been other cases, not only in the UK but elsewhere in the world.”
