UK terror threat level under review amid Iran strikes, defence secretary says
The terror threat level in the UK is being reviewed due to concerns that Iran will retaliate against US and Israeli attacks, the Defense Secretary said.
John Healey accused Iran on Sunday of “increasingly indiscriminate and widespread attack” after firing retaliatory missiles and drones at targets in the Middle East, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The current threat level has been determined as significant, meaning an attack is ‘likely’. This is the third of five levels identified by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC): Severe means an attack is “highly likely,” while critical means an attack is “highly likely in the near future.”
Mr Healey was asked by Sky News on Sunday morning whether the threat level was being reviewed and he replied: “Absolutely.”
“When you have a regime like this in the Middle East that attacks indiscriminately and on a large scale, hitting civilians and military targets, when you see some of its proxies able to take other actions on their behalf, then of course our force protection in the region is at its highest level. Our alertness and vigilance in the UK is also high,” he said.
Mr Healey added that Iran had sponsored 20 attempted terrorist attacks in the UK in recent years, all of which were foiled by security services, and pointed out that it had supplied 50,000 drones to Russia to support its four-year war in Ukraine.
“Iran and the regime it has long run is a source of evil. Killing its own citizens and sponsoring and exporting terrorism, including to countries like the UK. And of course the concern now is that this regime will attack,” Mr Healey said.
“People will be worried about hitting not only military targets but also civilian airports like Kuwait and hotels in Dubai and Bahrain.”
Several non-military targets were hit in Iran’s retaliatory strikes, after US and Israeli strikes killed at least 201 people across the country, according to the Iranian Red Crescent. At least 153 people were killed in an attack on a girls’ primary school in southern Iran, Iranian officials said.
Many people, including three US soldiers, died in Iran’s retaliation.
British soldiers and civilians were being put at risk from Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks”, the Defense Secretary said earlier on Sunday.
Since the attacks began, British military personnel in Bahrain were “within a few hundred metres” of a retaliatory missile and drone strike on Saturday. Two more missiles were fired towards Cyprus.
