u/Kosnagooo

Note that this figure is even higher than the latest Iran Human Rights report, which had put the number at 1,639

They have no shame, yet people still fall for this

The blurry video pops up on the Telegram messaging app, posted by a previously unknown account bearing the insignia of a hand holding a rifle in front of a red flag. A photograph of a synagogue in London, flashes up with the words “The Target” written across it in Arabic script. Next, the film flips to shaky footage taken from behind the closed gate of the synagogue late at night, appearing to show someone pacing around. The person throws an object at a window, breaking it, then sets fire to a bottle and launches it into the building. They run away into the night.

This clip of the recent arson attack is one of a series of videos posted online since early March by a new group calling itself the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand (or Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, Hayi). The group has used the videos to claim responsibility for a string of antisemitic attacks that have plagued British soil in recent months.

The Iranian regime has long used its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to flood Europe with violent plots, surveillance and propaganda, but Hayi’s sudden emergence has spread fear that a campaign to terrorise Britain’s Jewish communities is unfolding. While Iran has not formally recognised Hayi, it has been heralded by Iranian state media, and many experts are concerned it represents a modern kind of hybrid war, far away from the bombs and blockades of the Middle East.

The first of the recent attacks was on March 23, when four ambulances belonging to the Jewish charity Hatzola were set alight in Golders Green, north London, in the early hours. Weeks later, on April 15 there was an attempted firebombing at the Finchley Reform Synagogue, followed by a failed arson attack at the offices of an Iranian news outlet in west London. On April 17, a bag containing bottles of fluid was set on fire in the doorway of a building formerly occupied by a Jewish charity in Hendon, and the next day the Kenton United Synagogue in Shaftesbury Avenue, northwest London, was set on fire. Last week terror spread through the streets of Golders Green as a man allegedly stabbed two Jewish men in a daylight rampage.

Some of Hayi’s “proof of crime” videos, posted after each attack, appear to have been taken by accomplices at the scene. Others, as in the case of the stabbing, seem to have opportunistically spliced together footage available in the public domain. 

Counterterrorism police have arrested 28 people so far linked to the various incidents, with eight charged with arson-related offences. While the spectre of Iranian interference has been raised as an ongoing threat in the UK more broadly, there is yet to be an assessment as to whether the attacks are in any way linked to Iran or Hayi.

Cannon fodder

Even veteran Iran watchers were surprised when Hayi popped up in early March on Telegram channels affiliated with Iranian militias and pro-Iranian news outlets. Who was this group, and where had it come from so suddenly? Its name refers to Islamic depictions of the Day of Judgment and its insignia closely references the IRGC’s overseas arm, the Quds force. But could it really be a new terrorist group springing up overnight?

Its first video was of an amateurish firebomb attack on a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liège, on March 9, which caused no casualties and only minor damage. In the following weeks it claimed responsibility for 16 more attacks, according to analysis by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), including an arson attack on a car in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter and vandalism at a synagogue and a Jewish school in the Netherlands.

The ICCT states that Hayi is more likely to be a front for the IRGC than a terror group, allowing Iran “plausible deniability” by outsourcing antisemitic attacks to third parties: a gig economy for terror, finding people on social media, it is suspected, and paying them to carry out acts of seemingly minor destruction.

Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at the United Against Nuclear Iran think tank, puts it more starkly: “It is a front for the IRGC Quds force, it has its fingerprints all over it.”

On April 21, a 17-year-old British boy from Brent pleaded guilty to committing arson in relation to the attack on the Kenton United Synagogue, telling the court “I didn’t know it was a synagogue” and saying he had “no hate towards the Jewish people or their community”. Nobody was injured in the attack. A 19-year-old was also arrested as part of the investigation and released on bail to a date in May.

The lawyer for one of the two teenagers charged with the Antwerp attack, Chantal Van den Bosch, told the Dutch newspaper PZC: “This boy had no terrorist motives … in my view, third parties took advantage of vulnerable youths here, who were used as cannon fodder.”

The triangle of terror

For the 47 years since the Islamic revolution and the overthrow of the shah, Britain has seen hostile activity from Iran on its soil. British Jews and Iranians (who overwhelmingly oppose the Islamic Republic) have been the targets of a regime that has given the IRGC a mandate of exporting the Islamic revolution and nurturing its ideology across the world. But as relations between the West and the new regime have deteriorated in recent years and months, things have escalated significantly. 

In October 2025 the director general of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, said security services had tracked 20 Iran-linked terror plots in Britain in the preceding 12 months and intervened in hundreds of developing ones. He announced that Iran was also behind a string of antisemitic attacks in Australia, as well as failed assassination attempts in the Netherlands and in Spain.

Aarabi breaks down the Iranian method into what he calls the “triangle or terror”.

The first side is the use of “direct operatives” — for instance, the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who in 2018 used the cover of his diplomatic passport to fly to Europe on a passenger plane with half a kilogram of explosives with the intent of blowing up the leader of an exiled Iranian opposition group at a talk in Paris.

The second is to employ proxy groups in the form of existing criminal networks to carry out IRGC dirty work. As western intelligence becomes better at interrupting the IRGC’s own proxies, this outsourced approach has become increasingly popular, says Michael Jacobson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former State Department counterterrorism official.

“It is easily deniable for the Iranians,” says Jacobson, recalling how, in 2011, he and his team uncovered an attempt by the IRGC to use an individual tied to a Mexican drug cartel to plot an attack in the US but struggled to convince other governments to believe them. “They thought it was so fantastical that the Iranians would be partnering with a Mexican drug cartel,” he said. In Europe, Iran has solicited the use of eastern European criminal outfits.

Now in the wake of the Israeli and US-led war on Iran, “this is going in the direction of trying to find anyone, with no real established criminal ties, to pull out all the stops in the context of the war”, says Jacobson. He calls this the spaghetti strategy: “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”. 

Several Iranian dual nationals told The Sunday Times on condition of anonymity that they had been approached in the past year by Iranian intelligence services, including the ministry of intelligence and security and the intelligence arm of the IRGC, both in the UK and while travelling in Europe, Turkey and Iran. Some reported being threatened, while others said they were offered money in exchange for gathering information in the UK and, in some cases, for carrying out violent acts against targets on British soil.

The third side of Aarabi’s triangle is nurturing homegrown terrorism. Iran’s soft power network has been in development for decades, says Aarabi, in the form of IRGC-linked charities, mosques and educational institutions which “appear on the surface as legitimate entities but actually what they are doing is facilitating hostile activity for the IRGC and nurturing homegrown Islamist radicalisation in a way that is not too dissimilar to Isis and al-Qaeda”.

“They’ve doubled down on this particularly since October 7,” says Aarabi. This involves sponsoring anti-Israel marches and protests in London, intimidation tactics against the Jewish community and stepping up surveillance on the British Iranian community.

Recruiting British Iranians

One adviser to Iran’s newly appointed chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “One important point is that not everything is directly initiated or controlled by Tehran, but may instead be supported once it has taken shape organically,” drawing a parallel with western left-wing movements sympathetic to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. From Tehran’s perspective, he said, more “hardline” religious groups operating in Britain “represent a potential investment”.

Last week the Iranian embassy in the UK urged Iranians in Britain to enrol in an official “martyrdom” initiative it described as the “Jan Fada”, or “sacrificing life”, campaign. The appeal called on “all brave and noble children of Iran” to step forward in a “display of solidarity”. Applicants in Britain are directed to register through a link provided on the embassy’s website. The Sunday Times has reviewed the “International Registration Platform”. In addition to basic personal and contact details, international applicants are asked: “If you can provide any other help to the country, write it here.”

Last week, the Foreign Office summoned Iran’s ambassador to London over its new campaign, which he has denied carries any violent intent.

New anti-terror powers

What, then, can the security services do to combat the multi-headed hydra of antisemitism and Iranian influence? Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has said he will introduce new anti-terror powers that would enable the government to ban state threats such as the IRGC and label state-backed groups as terrorist organisations. This means anyone found carrying out activities on the IRGC’s behalf would be subject to the UK National Security Act (NSA) 2023, which carries a much harsher penalty than a standard conviction for low-level crime. 

Jonathan Hall KC, the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says: “The power that I’ve recommended would involve proscribing private groups as well, including front groups operating in the UK,” meaning anyone who carried out sabotage for hire by Iranian-linked groups, say, would be at risk of much harsher penalties too. These private groups would not be labelled as terrorist organisations but would be treated as harmful foreign intelligence services, meaning the full power of the NSA will apply to them.

These are imperative changes, says Hall, labelling the attacks as the biggest national security emergency in almost a decade. They are, he warns, leaving British Jews “now thinking they cannot live a normal life”.