Destroyed, dismantled or dangerous: Is Iran still a global threat?

0:00Jason Farrell:Iran, pounded into submission by Israel and the US, or merely wounded, angry and ready to continue threatening the global order. It's The Daily, I'm Neil Paterson. More on that after this.

0:14Jason Farrell:Obliterated, destroyed, dismantled, all words used, mostly by Donald Trump, to describe Iran's ability to wage war on the West, following that brief but brutal conflict with Israel and the United States. But what's the reality on the ground in a country different to any other in the region? Well, in a little while, we'll be hearing from our security and defence analyst, Professor Michael Clarke, about Iran's current global ambitions. But first, and I have to say picking their moment pretty well, the Intelligence and Security Committee here in the UK has released a report on the continuing threat Iran poses to us.

0:50Jason Farrell:Our home editor, Jason Farrell, has been taking a look. Jason, just walk us through it. What does it say?

0:54Niall Paterson:Well, it's 250 pages, quite a lot of detail in here. And essentially what it is saying is that whilst Iran's activity is less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia or China, it does pose a wide ranging threat to UK national security. It says it shouldn't be underestimated. It is persistent and crucially unpredictable. And it talks about the physical threat. Iranian intelligence services have shown they're willing and often able through third party agency to attempt assassination within the UK and kidnap. I think we should mention the restrictions of this report in that it was compiled up to August 2023.

1:37Niall Paterson:So it's quite old. Obviously, a lot has happened. The landscape has changed. We obviously had the October 7th attacks in Israel and the subsequent events in Gaza. And of course, Iran has more recently had its nuclear capabilities struck by the Americans. This talks about a growing nuclear capability, but it also kind of criticizes the government in a sense for being obsessed with that and not focusing enough on the UK threat, that being physical threats, espionage and also cyber security.

2:12Jason Farrell:OK, Jason, so a lot has happened, but presumably the British government is not operating under the assumption that the threat from Iran has diminished in the two years since the data was collected for this report.

2:24Niall Paterson:No, I mean, this report is essentially saying everything that it's saying is relevant today. and also it's not about today. It is about building up our capability. It's actually saying the government's been firefighting. It hasn't been having a long-term strategic view on how to tackle Iran. And one of those things is simply building up a pipeline of expertise. It says the government isn't doing that. There's one striking comment in here from one of the experts who says if you have people running policy in the Foreign Office who don't speak a word of Persian, then that's a fat lot of good, to be honest.

2:59Niall Paterson:So quite critical of the way in which we've approached the problem of Iran and counter state threat strategy.

3:07Jason Farrell:The ISC's assessment that the Iranian state is using third parties to carry out these missions on British soil. What does that mean?

3:17Niall Paterson:I think there's two parts to that. There is the Hamas and Hezbollah and other proxies that they're using around globally, which they are providing weapons and cyber assistance and financial support to, the report says, such as Hamas. And so, although it doesn't comment on Iran's involvement in the October 7th attacks, it does obviously make that observation. And then there are using proxies for terrorist attacks on UK soil. And that could be small time crooks. It could be people who they are paying to get involved in carrying out missions for Iran, who aren't necessarily in any other way connected to Iranian authorities, but they're just acting on their behalf.

4:04Niall Paterson:And that, again, is something that Ken McCullum pointed out in the past, where he's talked about Iran using proxies to conduct attacks on UK soil.

4:15Jason Farrell:So what do you do about it, Jason?

4:17Niall Paterson:This report is suggesting that we have to just be alive to it. We have to build up our understanding of Iran. It doesn't, I mean, I have to say, it doesn't like set out a clear strategy of whether or not we need to improve diplomatic relationships with Iran or completely ostracize them as a state. In fact, it's quite interesting at one point. It talks about the government's sanctions. Given the scepticism we've heard from external experts as to the efficiency of sanctions, the government should reconsider whether sanctions will in practice deliver behavioural change or, in fact, unhelpfully push Iran towards China.

4:59Niall Paterson:And I think that's a really interesting balance that is being faced right now. We can see that this is a state. It's being hostile to the UK. it's acting in ways in which we need to protect ourselves and certainly beef up security around Iranian interests and interestingly as well not just Iranian dissidents in the UK but it's also talking about Jewish interests and Israeli interests within the UK and it says we need to make clear to Iran that if attacks are made on UK soil they may consider it to be an attack on Israel or attack on their own dissidents but we need to make it clear that we see that as an attack on UK interests.

5:40Jason Farrell:Jason, thanks. Look, at this point, I was going to bring in our security and defence analyst, Professor Michael Clarke. You're actually here, Michael, but can you just pause for a second if that's OK? This is a moving story. Soon after we spoke to Jason, guess who we heard from the Iranian embassy here in the UK? Pretty lengthy statement, but I'm going to read you just part of it. It starts here. The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran hereby expresses its strong protest and categorical rejection of the unfounded, politically motivated and hostile allegations contained therein. The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran firmly denies all allegations made in these sections and considers them to be baseless, irresponsible and reflective of a broader pattern of distortion intended to malign Iran's legitimate national and regional interests.

6:28Jason Farrell:These claims not only lack substantive evidence but also contradict the Islamic Republic of Iran's principled commitment to international law, sovereign equality and peaceful coexistence. Dear listeners, you might be able to detect a smile playing on the lips of Professor Michael Clarke at that. I mean, first and foremost, I mean, that is a robust statement, isn't it? It's like Captain Renault in Casablanca, isn't it? I'm shocked, shocked, Monsieur Rick, that gambling is going on in this establishment. Here are you winning, sir. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, they will say this and it's a robust pushback, but we all know that they're doing it.

7:02and throughout the Western world, in Western Europe, in the United States, in Britain, we're a prime target in Europe, but we know they've been doing this for quite a long time. And there's a great deal of evidence of it. And this ISC report has brought a lot of evidence forward into the public domain, but even that's only up to date until 2023. And since that report was completed, it's got quite a lot worse in the last 18 months or two years.

7:26Jason Farrell:So they pose more of a threat now than over that period that the ISC was examining. Yes, I mean, MI5 are saying that in the last two years, since 2022, or 2022 till now, there have been more than 20 plots that they have dealt with. Now, in some cases, they may have blown the plot, they may have just veered it off, they may have just intercepted it very early on. But what they've said is that we have dealt with 20 separate instances of exactly this sort of thing in two and a bit years. And it is the assessment of the ISC that Iran, whilst more unpredictable, poses an equal risk to the UK as Russia.

8:04They will, yeah. I mean, it's not that Iran is as big a country as Russia or poses the width of the threat that Russia does. But what they say is that the Iranians have a very high appetite for risk. They're very unpredictable. and what Kevin Jones said, Lord Beamish, who is the chair of the committee now, he said that this is a persistent and dangerous and unpredictable set of challenges that we face. And so in that respect, it's not as serious as the Russian threat, but it hits our intelligence services in about the same way. So what is it they are doing and why? Lots of different things. So the things that you tend to read about in the paper are attempted assassinations of Iranian dissidents who tend to operate in the UK and in London.

8:48They have engaged in standard espionage, trying to spy on us. They've engaged, we think, in a certain amount of sabotage and a great deal of cyber attack. They've been cyber attacking us for a long time. And Iran, remember, is a pretty sophisticated society with some very sophisticated operatives in Iran. And the IRGC, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps, is on some estimates believed to cream off about 30 % of all government revenues. So it's very, very well funded and its leaders are extremely well cared for in their own society for as long as they stay alive. And the IRGC, the Quds Force, is the force that operates abroad from IRGC and that they are very active.

9:30So they're active in every way that what they're trying to do is to undermine Britain and the Western world in every way they can think of. So it's kind of constant needling rather than actions designed to provoke regime change here in the United Kingdom. Exactly right, Neil. I think you put it nicely, needling, because they think that they can get some advantage, that they can keep us out of involvement in Middle Eastern politics where we try to support our allies and friends, particularly in the Gulf, remember. You know, the Iranians are historically opposed to Saudi Arabia. Saudi and Iran are the two big regional powers and around Saudi Arabia are the Gulf states of, you know, Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain and Oman and United Arab Emirates.

10:12And that constant pressure is something, you know, our allies in the Gulf matter to us and we matter to them. And the Iranians are always trying to operate against that.

10:20Jason Farrell:But it is fair to say that as a result of the strikes of the 12-day war, that Iran's military capacity capability has been reduced. Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, those strikes, particularly the Israeli strikes, I mean, they say that they took out 30 key people. they hit several hundred targets in that 12 days and they think that they've dismantled a large part of the military structures of Iran and I think that's probably true. On the other hand I mean given what I was saying about the IRGC they will they can reconstitute themselves I mean reasonably efficiently we don't know how long that's going to take them but I mean Mohammed Pakpour who's the leader of IRGC he's still around Ismail Ghani who's the leader of the Quds force that operate abroad, he's still around.

11:06And Khatimi, the intelligence leader, he's still there. So these people still exist. They're very able. And they've got multiple thousands of IRGC operatives, some soldiers, some agents that they can call on. So you'd expect the Iranians to be able to reconstitute what they do. But their formal military structure has certainly been set back. And their nuclear program has certainly been delayed. But whether it's been destroyed is a different questions.

11:33Jason Farrell:See, I suppose that for many people listening to this, it will still feel like this is a threat that exists over there rather than here at home. But with the Intelligence and Security Committee report, with the warnings that we have previously had from the head of MI5, it is starting to feel like this is a battle, if not an all-out war, that is taking place on our doorsteps. So how concerned should I be? You should be concerned, and the government is is concerned as well and is taking steps through the strategic defense review and the national security strategy to try to address all that, although how quickly and well we do it is another question.

12:12But the point is that what both Russia and Iran are up to at the moment is regarded as sub-threshold warfare, right up to the threshold of actual attack. They do everything. So cyber attack, sabotage, assassination, trying to interfere with our power lines, interfere with our pipelines. lines, that between them, Russia and Iran are doing the same sort of thing. And that that is growing stronger all the time. And that we, that Britain is in the crosshairs, both for different reasons, both for Russia and Iran. Both Russia and Iran have got a personal animus, real personal animus towards Great Britain, partly because of history and partly because of the stances we take on certain global issues.

12:50And they really want to target us. And so they're targeting us right up to the level of outright war, outright conflict. Now, whether they cross that line or whether they accidentally cross it, we will see. But I mean, at the moment, I mean, here you've got the Iranians backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen and they've just blown up a tanker. I mean, yesterday they just literally got hold of a tanker and they just blew it up and sank it. I mean, that's the second or third ship that they've sunk. Now, you know, that sort of behavior then just tends to escalate. So we're not far away, not far away from some sort of militarized confrontation with both Russia and Iran, sadly.

13:26Jason Farrell:It certainly feels like that. But the thing I am struggling to work out, and maybe you can help me with this, Michael, is whether or not, as a result of everything that has happened, the 12 days of war, the airstrikes, the diplomatic efforts, sanctions, everything, has Iran been diminished or brought up as a regional power? Does it have more support in the region as a result? Or are we talking about a country whose fortunes are clearly on the wane? Yeah, it's less strong than it was for sure. This 12-day war did a lot of harm. The 7th of October attacks and all that's happened since then in Gaza and Lebanon and with the Houthis and in Iraq, all of that has diminished Iran's regional power, which seemed to be quite big before that.

14:08So the Iranians were in a much worse position than they were before the 7th of October attack. But are they more dangerous as a result? In a way, yes. That's the point. The Iranians, they're not going to fall into regime change. The Iranian regime doesn't look as if it's going to collapse, and I think there's good reasons why they won't collapse. And we don't know how aggressive they now feel to the rest of us because they're still recovering from everything that's happened to them in the last two to three months. But they have the capability still to be a very maligned power in the region and towards certain of us in the outside world.

14:40Whether they will really go for that or whether they'll decide to rethink their whole strategic approach to the outside world, we don't yet know. They're still recovering from what's happened to them.

14:51Jason Farrell:But if you're one of the hawks in the situation room in the White House, are you sitting there now considering it a mistake to stop when they did, that they could have gone further, that they could have diminished the Iranians much, much more significantly than they have? I'm sure they're having those discussions because that's exactly what the Israelis want to convince them of. And I mean, the Americans, until this administration, the Americans would never have gone this far backing Israel against Iran. But this administration has for its own reasons. And maybe it will turn out to be successful.

15:20But you're exactly right, Neil. That sense that we have hurt Iran, but we've not diminished the regime so that it collapses is an active argument, I think, going on in the United States. And then we've got to consider, I mean, Iran, it's a big country, right? We keep saying it's 90 million people. It's got a very well-educated population. It's got a lot of natural wealth, a great deal of natural resource, and a terrific, a terrific and distinguished history as Persia. And attacking Iran really does create a rally around the flag mentality. The Iranians, whatever they think of their government, they think even less of those who attack them from outside.

15:58And, you know, the government of Iran, the mullahs are extremely unpopular, but they're not as unpopular as the Israelis, the Americans or the Brits.

16:05Jason Farrell:Michael, thanks very much indeed. And to find out the very latest on what's going on in and around the Middle East, just head to SkyNews.com. The Sky News Daily is back again Friday.