The Iranian refugees spying on Britain Tehran is blackmailing its citizens

Over the past three years, at least 20 Iranian terrorist plots have been detected on British soil. Some have involved members of organised criminal gangs, and targeted both prominent Jews and Iranian opposition journalists. All these plots depend on networks of spies, who conduct surveillance on behalf of the regime.

Until now, little has been known about how or where these agents are recruited. But UnHerd can now reveal an extraordinary security loophole — one increasingly exploited by the Iranian state. Its London embassy is routinely enabling Iranian refugees to break UK immigration rules and secretly visit their homeland. These operations are so routine, that the embassy even has a form it issues to refugees wishing to illicitly return to Iran.

But this assistance comes with a price: the embassy then blackmails the refugees into becoming intelligence service informants, with potentially dire consequences for British security. 

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Since 2010, about 1,300 Iranians have been granted full refugee status every year in Britain. In the year to March 2024, over 8,000 Iranians applied for asylum here, and since 2018 they have consistently been among the top three nationalities arriving in small boats. 

It’s impossible to know how many have been encouraged by the Iranian government to visit the country they supposedly fled. But it’s nonetheless clear that the system is a well-oiled machine — as one 34-year-old discovered. 

In 2018, Amir* was granted refuge in Britain, telling the authorities that he had converted from Islam to Christianity. In the government’s theocratic eyes, this meant he was an apostate, a crime punishable by death. As far as Amir knew, his conversion had been successfully concealed from the regime.

Three years after Amir arrived in Britain, his mother fell seriously ill. Fearing she might not survive, he applied for a passport from the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Kensington. During this visit, Amir said nothing of his conversion, telling embassy officials he had invented a story about being an anti-regime activist to gain a better life in Britain. Amir was duly granted a passport. 

Amir knew full well that his visit would jeopardise his refugee status in Britain: a status contingent on the claimant never returning home other than in exceptional circumstances, and then with HK government permission. He did not tell the Home Office about his trip, first flying to Turkey using the British refugee travel document issued by the UK government to people given asylum. Once in Turkey, Amir swapped it for his newly issued Iranian passport. 

When he landed in Tehran, though, things took a dark turn. Amir’s passport was confiscated, and he was told to attend an interview at an office of Iran’s primary intelligence agency: the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

Disguised as an import-export business in uptown Tehran, the office wasn’t far from MOIS’s official headquarters. A security guard checked Amir’s name and led him to a small, empty white room where he was left for hours and denied access to a lavatory.

Eventually, a man in his mid-40s entered. The official was calm and emotionless, and led Amir to a private office, where his passport was lying on a desk. 

It soon became obvious the interrogator knew all about Amir’s life: his conversion, the underground churches in Tehran he had attended years earlier, and the friends he worshipped with in Britain and Iran. Then the man said: “You know, you could be executed for leaving Islam.” 

After Amir insisted he had only returned home to see his dying mother, the man responded: “You may die before she does.” Then came a further threat. “As a refugee, you shouldn’t be coming back to Iran. Do the English authorities know?” 

Amir spent the next two weeks in turmoil, terrified he might be arrested, tried and executed in Iran, or arrested and deported after his return to England.

And then, he was summoned again, this time to an apartment near his family’s home. There, the interrogator, a Mr Mohammadi, immediately asked: “Do you want to go back to London? Or should I refer your case to the court to review your apostasy?” 

Mr Mohammadi started reeling off the names of Amir’s Iranian Christian friends, as well as activists he followed on Facebook, saying Amir he had to “get close” to them in London and supply information to his handlers. The embassy would report his trip to the Home Office if he refused, and his parents, both in Iran, would be targeted. 

Left with no choice but to agree, Amir was then given a phone number and $1,000 in cash, saying it was a “token of appreciation”. Back in London, Amir was “filled with paranoia. A few days after I arrived, a message came from an Iranian phone number. It was Mohammadi, asking questions, dropping names, fishing for information. The messages came and went, sporadic but unnerving.” Amir cooperated.

It was only after the death of his parents that Amir feel safe enough to cut contact. He blocked the number, changed his handset, and vowed never to return to Iran. “But I’m still haunted,” he tells UnHerd. “I’ve never reported any of this to the UK authorities, because I’m terrified I could be removed.”

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It would seem, according to our interviewees that the British government is aware that some Iranians clandestinely return to their homeland. It is increasingly suspicious of refugees travelling to Turkey. So visitors — and the Islamic Republic — are working to stay one step ahead. 

A case in point is Mehdi*, who three years ago was allowed to stay in Britain after claiming to be an anti-regime activist. Now working in construction, Mehdi visited his homeland last summer using a different route. He travelled first to Italy, using his refugee travel document and then used a newly acquired Iranian passport to enter Armenia. From there, Mehdi crossed into Turkey, before finally reaching Iran. 

Mehdi also avoided visiting the London embassy in person. Refugees fear that the building is under surveillance by the British authorities, so he used a UK-based Iranian travel agent to deliver the application form and pick up his passport. But this service is anything but secretive, advertising on Facebook in Farsi: “Leave everything related to the Iranian embassy to us. In the shortest time, the fastest service!” The travel agent also gives advice on how long refugees can stay outside Britain without losing entitlement to benefits, and promises to secure the necessary visas for travel via Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan.

Posing as refugees, we managed to contact this agent via a phone number she posts on social media to advertise her services. She told us that if we had no Iranian documents, such as a military service card, a relative in Iran could go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to verify our identities. If that were not possible, she said, her agency could arrange the necessary verification.

The embassy, the agent continued, would not take issue with us being refugees. “We assist refugees with this process regularly,” she said, “and there haven’t been any problems.” She also said the only problem was that so many refugees were applying that the next available appointment would only be in mid-July — we applied in May. “Once processed, it takes about a month to receive the passport,” she added. “We send clients with refugee travel documents to the embassy daily, and to date, no one has reported any issues upon re-entering Iran.”

The agent also repeated the assurance given to Mehdi: that we need not attend in person. “We’re able to verify your identity on behalf of the embassy,” she said, “and your passport will be sent to you by post.” 

To avoid being caught with an Iranian passport upon returning to Britain, there are even courier services available from overseas. Once again, Mehdi is a good example here. Before returning to Britain, he left his Iranian documents with an agency in Armenia, which then delivered them to his home. 

All the while, the Home Office remained unaware of Mehdi’s movements, a recurring theme in our investigation We spoke to Rezvan*, for example, a third refugee who returned to Iran via Iraq for a holiday this spring. When Rezvan returned to the UK border, he was ready to present the Iraqi stamps in his travel document, “but the officer didn’t even ask to see them”.  

You can find similar discussions online, too. The travel agent’s Instagram feed includes semi-open discussion from refugees about the risks of being detected by the UK authorities. One man calling himself Iranian.london.2020 says he had applied for an Iranian passport three weeks earlier, but had since been contacted by the Home Office, asking awkward questions. “I have not told anyone that I took this action,” he wrote. “I swear to God I am extremely stressed. Has anyone else had such an experience?” Another user offered reassurance. “Don’t worry, the Iranian embassy won’t give any notice to England… just deny it and say that you don’t have an Iranian passport.”

In another private social media group, an Iranian who returned for a holiday offers advice on how to handle the inevitable meeting with the MOIS. “Have something unimportant ready to give them, some information,” they suggested. “It will help you.”

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Like Amir, Mehdi was pressured to become a spy once he arrived in Iran. His passport was confiscated, and he was told to attend a meeting with MOIS officials. He too disclaimed involvement in politics, claiming he had come to Britain because a friend had told him it was a “great country” where he could do well: and that he was merely a builder. Mehdi was asked about his social circle in the UK, and if he had ever participated in anti-regime protests. He replied that he had, but only to support his asylum claim. Iranian officials also asked him to identify other protestors from photographs. Eventually, MOIS let him go, while Mehdi himself insists he never became a spy. Rezvan said that he, too, was forced to meet the MOIS, but declined to give details.

Iran clearly sees Britain’s émigré community, perhaps as large as 500,000, as one that needs monitoring — and as a source of vital intelligence. Yet if that explains the cases of Amir and Mehdi, seemingly apolitical Iranians blackmailed by the MOIS, the regime targets other refugees in a more concerted way. 

In January, a London-based opposition journalist called Reza* received a call from his father in Tehran — who told him he was at a hotel with an unnamed MOIS officer. He told Reza that if he did not start collaborating, he would never see his parents again, and their pensions would be cut off. He added: “Our friends in London know how to find you.” He was given a week to consider the offer.

The call, seven days later, came from Reza’s father’s phone, and this time the MOIS officer revealed he had intimate details of his work and associates. But unlike in Amir’s case, Reza’s blackmail was more specific, with the officer offering him £70,000 if he agreed to become an informant on the channel where he worked. Reza declined, saying he would rather leave his profession entirely. “That’s not enough,” the officer responded. “You have no choice. We need your access.” Since then, his parents’ pensions have been suspended, and they have been barred from leaving Iran. Despite this pressure, Reza continues to do his job in London and says he will not give in to the MOIS. 

Even so, his case is far from unique. This week, the BBC said the families of staff at its Persian service were also being targeted and harassed. In the wake of its announcement, a BBC Persian journalist told us that his family had been approached in Iran, and told to persuade him to travel to Iraqi Kurdistan for a meeting with MOIS agents. He said that many of his colleagues experienced the same threat. 

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Consider this. A hostile state is facilitating the apparently illegal travel of supposed refugees as a means of recruiting spies. Whitehall, according to our interviewees is aware. But what are they doing about it? When we asked, a Government spokesman said: “We take all allegations of abuse of the immigration system extremely seriously and will not hesitate to take appropriate action where necessary.” For its part, the Iranian embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper made a statement in Parliament, saying Iran “poses an unacceptable threat to our domestic security which cannot continue”, promising new powers to strengthen border security and “keep the public safe”. Yet given the agility and relentless nature of Iranian methods — and the apparent inability of Britain to staunch it — she won’t find it easy to fulfil her pledge. 

*Names have been changed.

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