Why Iranian networks could be recruiting Brits for terror

0:01Sky News, the full story first.

0:10Iran's intelligence service is recruiting Brits to fight the West via social media, and this is why.

0:35your feeds by 7.45am so you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Sam & Anne's wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00Hi everyone, Neil here and today we're going to be discussing a rather troubling Sky News investigation from our Home Affairs editor, Jason Farrell We're going to take you inside the Iranian networks recruiting British people for criminal and terrorist activities. Along with his producer Nick, Jason has been in communication over social media with someone who claims to work for Iranian intelligence. What's offered is cash in return for services or skills, and it brings the conflict in the Gulf a lot closer to home. The ability of foreign actors to recruit people to do damage to our national security is bigger than we, the public, think it is.

1:42Our own intelligence services have been warning about Iranian-sponsored plots on British soil for some time, and Iran's funding of terrorist groups like Hezbollah is well known. So it is entirely believable that Iran would recruit in this fashion. This has been going on since time immemorial. Find someone, compromise them, blackmail them if you have to. Jason Farrell is our Home Affairs Editor. Jason, welcome back to the podcast. And look, a fascinating investigation, but I think we need to kind of almost go back to basics to begin. What level of threat does Iran really pose to us here domestically in the UK?

2:18There's been lots of talk about intercontinental ballistic missiles, but what's the reality? The reality is that we heard from Ken McCollum in October, the head of MI5, saying that in the last year, they had foiled 20 plots in the UK. and the year before when he'd stood up, he'd said there were roughly 20 plots then. So, you know, this is a consistent and growing problem. He pointed to the fact that Iran was following the Russian example of using proxies and had a warning to people who were interested and who may not be ideologically minded themselves, but maybe motivated solely by cash to do things for a foreign intelligence service.

3:03There are now new laws in place that will make those crimes quite heavily punishable. When you say proxies, I think of organisations like Hezbollah, Hamas, who we know that the Iranian regime have funded over the years. But you're talking about individuals. Individuals, yes, criminals or people who are just turned by the idea of earning what they think is an easy buck. There was quite an interesting one, guy who's prosecuted in 2023 called Magomed Hussein Dovteev. And he was Chechen-born Austrian national who was sent to spy on or take videos of Iran international at a time when Iran was definitely targeting journalists working for this independent Persian news channel based in London in Chiswick Park.

3:51And he was stopped whilst he was taking these videos. And he was charged and sent to jail. And he actually was asking in the Sunday Times this weekend, saying that when he came out on parole, he said that he was offered 50 ,000 euros to do this. He thought he was going to earn an easy buck. Now, he probably never saw that money. Instead, he saw a back of a prison cell. I guess recent events have given a clue as to the kind of activities these proxies are attempting to undertake. Of course, we're having these spate of attacks around London, 23rd of last month, we had the attack in Golders Green, and we've seen half a dozen other attacks.

4:27And there've been lots of arrests, lots of young people, especially. And the message that seems to be coming from the police, from the government, from the security minister, from the prime minister, is there's a concern around, again, this word proxies, people being hired to do stuff for cash, potentially by national bodies. There was a lot of talk around Telegram being a recruiting area, social media app. Right, yes, you're going to have to explain, because I'm very much of the Twitter generation. I still call it Twitter, for example, but Telegram is a slightly different beast. Yeah, it's just you have channels on there that put up feeds.

5:03You can use Telegram very much the same way that you would use Twitter. But this particular channel that we're looking at, all the feeds are very much Iran-focused news and Iranian propaganda about what's going on in the war, very much giving the impression that they're on top, they're winning. And if you're someone who's drawn to that, then you've essentially entered the first part of the filter, if you like. So the next stage of that is there's an opportunity to get in touch. And they are saying they are Iran's intelligence service. And if you want to get involved, click this button. Just such a strange thing.

5:41The Iranian intelligence service is having an account on telegram so i am presuming this is the point at which you are perhaps a member of the team interacted yes so my producer nick decided to go in press the buttons it says start it says iran's intelligence service is recruiting high paid agents in a completely secure and professional environment with 24 7 monitoring and support so don't worry we'll look after you you'll be okay if you come through to the next level. And then you click through and it says, thanks for contacting us. All your data and conversation is safe and secure here. Please leave a phone number or ID or Telegram account and our experts will contact you soon.

6:22Thank you for your patience. You've reached out to whoever is behind this particular Telegram channel. What did they reply? How did they engage you? I think the first thing they really want to know is what's your name? Which city are you from? What access do you have? That's in the first question. And Nick says, what do you mean? I don't understand. What access do you mean? So that's clarified here. It says by access, I mean, do you know anyone in the military or security services in your country who you can get information from? These days, there's a lot of movement of Americans to British bases.

6:55So immediately, that is essentially asking Nick to get involved in espionage. Which, of course, would be illegal in this country. Yes. So that's an immediate offer to commit a crime, to offer that kind of information to a foreign intelligence service. Nick asks what kind of information they need. They then say, is that another question? Do you have any relatives or friends in Israel or can you go there yourself? So what we're seeing here is what seems to be a set of prepared questions. And at this stage, we could well be talking to a bot. I was going to ask, I mean, the way that this is set up seems very much like, you know, the chat assistant that's there when I access my online banking.

7:37Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that that's what's going on here. So to start with, it's picking you out and it's putting you into various boxes. So did Nick fit into the box where he could help with the security services and access to British government? He didn't seem to know. OK, next question. Can he go to Israel? So it's now kind of a bit more kind of specific. It's not just can you go, but will you go? I just want to know whether you can or not so we can make an overall decision to move forward properly with the work. At this stage, has anything been said about what it is they want Nick to do?

8:13No. So that is therefore obviously Nick's question. You know, what do you want me to do in Israel? And, you know, what money will you pay me? Assuming that Nick is financially motivated at this point, he's making it a little bit clear now that it may not be ideologically motivated, it may just be motivated by money. And then it's more about here, it's all about reassurance now. So it seems like we have a person taking over because they've clearly identified the Nick as someone who could go to Israel, might be willing to go to Israel. So we're getting a lot of, don't worry, before you have to do anything, I'll tell you, we just need to wait and I'll let you know.

8:51And then they say, It might be in the UK, but it might be in Israel. Don't worry. And they're just keeping their options open at this point. They're not trying to pressure him too much. I think they're leaning towards Nick giving something away here as to what he might be willing to do. If we assume for a second that this is indeed the Iranian intelligence services reaching out to hire people in this country, I mean, Nick could be anyone at this point. I mean, presumably, whilst they're providing him with reassurances, Didn't he have to provide them with something similar? Well, he does eventually.

9:25And just a couple of things on this. As you say, it could be anyone, it could be anyone anywhere in the world. And Nick's very much still asking the questions. But they do come to a point, obviously, where they want Nick to cross a line. So I'll read you the moment where that comes. They say, to gain trust from my side regarding finances and for me to trust you as well, send a photo of your passport and also take a video holding your passport next to your face. In the video, say, hello, I'm from London and I want to cooperate. I will also pay you for this task and you can be sure about the payments.

10:05And then there's a bit more I'm telling you. Don't worry, just do this and I'll let you know. And obviously Nick doesn't do that because if he did that, he really would be compromising himself. Completely, completely. So was that the point at which kind of contact between you and whoever was at the other end of this finish? To be honest, I still hasn't finished, even though there's still stuff going on now as we speak. But what happened after that is he says, I'm not sure about giving you my passport. And then it's again, don't worry, we'll pay you. And then Nick says, how do I know if I can trust you?

10:39Can I see your face and your name? We get a name. And again, it's don't worry, you do the work and I promise you, I'll give you the money. you're talking to an Iranian, not a lying Westerner. So, yeah. I mean, it's almost like you're kind of on an Iranian zero hours contract. You sign up, you provide them with your details and what you would then be waiting for a direction, an order, some task that needs to be fulfilled. Yeah. Depending on your skills and your access. It does feel to me like this is very much a recruitment process where they're not just recruiting, they're building a database of people.

11:18And people will go into different boxes depending on what they said they can do. And that's very, very dangerous for those people who are getting involved. And one of the reasons is that they don't know who they're dealing with. We don't know who this is. It could be the British Security Services. It could be the Americans. It could be the Israelis. But more likely, it is someone hostile. But is it the Iranians? It could be as one security experts said to us, the Russians. Because once you've compromised yourself, they've got you in their pocket. So you've taken money, you've given your passport saying you're willing to cooperate.

11:52Cooperate with who? It could be any security service. It might be that you are being signed up to the Iranian database, but hey, it's tapped into by the British security services and they've got you as well. So it's very dicey. But what I would say is that the better that this AI gets filtering people out and picking the right people, obviously, the greater the threat to our national security. I mean, because this is just a 21st century version of what intelligence services around the world have done since time immemorial. Find someone, pay them money, court them somehow, and get them to do things on behalf of your nation.

12:33It's just, it's been accelerated incredibly. Yeah. AI is a massive accelerant to exactly what you're saying. This has been going on since time immemorial. Find someone, compromise them, blackmail them if you have to. And AI is now curating the internet, curating social media. People are self-selecting. They can almost instantly engage with this bot, give them their details. And already a database is starting to be created around their personality. And once that database flags up, here's someone who might be prepared to go to Israel, suddenly you've got a handler.

13:11I'm Sam Coates from Sky News. And I'm Anne McElvoy from Politico. Downing Street drama, leadership battles and policy U-turns. We're on it before it breaks. We take you straight into the rooms where the real political conversations are happening. Smart Insight, clear analysis in your feeds by 7.45am. So you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Sam and Anne's wherever you get your podcasts.

13:51so how concerned should we be there are many many people out there who are short of a bob or two right now who may even be ideologically in the direction of you know the iranian regime's ultimate goals, for whom this is a really, really easy way to get into some very, very sticky situations. We don't know yet about what's been happening in London over the last month. And a lot of these cases are active. So not talking about any specific individual, but the general mood that we're getting from the people who've been involved in these arson attacks, and there've been 26 arrests now, eight people charged with arson.

14:32And if the intelligence services find that some of those have been motivated by foreign intelligence services, they could be charged under the National Security Act, which suddenly increases their sentence dramatically. So those people need to worry about that. But what I worry about going through this system is that I think what we've seen there is, I hate to say it, but the dross, the people who've been kind of like, okay, well, you know, you can go and do that. Here's a soft target. And what we may be not seeing is the people who are signed up to higher impact jobs, longer term projects, espionage, undercover stuff, who's being filtered and how many people are being filtered into that at the same time as we're seeing all these other smaller criminal acts that are still very serious for the Jewish community and having a real impact on those communities.

15:27But there could be a layer above that and a layer above that of people who actually more high value, who they're not going to tell to go and throw a petrol bomb at a synagogue because they've got bigger plans for them. We started with you, Terli, about chemical and head of MI5 and the fact that they are aware that there is a recruitment process going on, should we also then presume that there is counterintelligence taking place here, that they are actively, not just actively aware of these sites, but are doing something with them? I mean, I have absolutely no doubt that our security services have done exactly what we've done and more, and will be totally aware and across what we're talking about.

16:06Obviously, there's this big debate now around whether the IRGC, the Islamist Revolutionary Guard Corps, should be prescribed. and banned basically yes and you know put them in the the same bucket as isis and but obviously we've done this with palestine action which has been a protest group within the uk that the government feels stepped beyond the boundaries of protest and certainly will lots of people argue that they fit all the criteria to be banned as a terrorist organization and then that would give the police more powers to then arrest people under terrorism action and disrupt them so that That is obviously one thing that's being considered in government, and that may help the police.

16:48But the security services, you know, I'm quite sure this is pretty much in plain sight. And they will no doubt be doing everything they can to find out not only where these things are going up, but who's signing up to them. It's the most dangerous thing about this, the fact that it is taking place in plain sight. Now, back in the day, we thought of this sort of activity would be limited to what's known as the dark web. this all you need is to go to your app store and download telegram that scares me that petrifies me yeah i think so because like you say the actual process of it hasn't changed that much you're looking for people who are disaffected you might go to universities you might try and you know find someone you'd have to meet them in a park or something like that park bench holding a red rose at 11 o 'clock on a thursday yeah yeah and now it's just you've got the accelerant of the internet.

17:37And on top of that, you've got the external of AI. And I think the security services are worried about AI for all sorts of different reasons in terms of compromising security and how it can be used. And this is just one small example, actually, of how it is basically allowing national security organizations and hostile groups to curate people who access social media and funnel them through their own channels into their own database of how useful they will be to them and i think we should be frightened about that because i think that's very very worrying thanks jason and thanks very much to you for listening remember you can get in touch directly we're always in the market for ideas for future episodes in fact we've got one coming next week why at sky.uk is the email and do make sure to give the podcast a follow if you don't already.

18:30We're back again tomorrow.

18:59so you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Sam & An's wherever you get your podcasts.