Iranian spies are attempting to recruit teenagers on social media to carry out attacks on British soil.
Various channels on messaging app Telegram are offering payments of £500 to carry out tasks purportedly for Tehran including surveillance on potential targets, it has emerged.
The channels, which are publicly accessible, are advertised on an account linked to Iran’s intelligence service.
Experts believe that Tehran is expanding a recruitment strategy it pursued in Israel, where several people as young as 14 have been charged with filming Israeli military targets in exchange for cash.
The jobs, advertised in English and Hebrew, vary from filming to tailing targets, with thousands of pounds offered for more complex tasks.
The channels use automated chatbots to request information including location of the recruit, their motivation and potential skill set before offering payments in cryptocurrency to hide the source.
Yesterday, former Israeli intelligence officer Or Horvitz said: ‘It’s not a secret that Iranian intelligence is working very hard in both the US and the UK on operations like this.
‘This is part of a broader security strategy being developed in these countries. Because they find it difficult to operate directly, they often try to act indirectly – but they show little restraint on this issue.
Various channels on Telegram, a messaging app, are offering payments of £500 to carry out tasks purportedly for Tehran including surveillance on potential targets, it has emerged
‘They have carried out multiple actions on both UK and US soil, attempting to destabilise situations and, most importantly, targeting Jews and Israelis.
‘This represents a significant effort on their part.
‘From what I understand, they have no real red lines when it comes to operating in the UK, which they view as one of the most attractive environments in which to operate.’
The development comes as police continue to investigate whether Iran hired criminal proxies to torch four Jewish community ambulances in Golders Green on Monday.
The three arsonists remain at large, but investigators are increasingly convinced that Iran was behind the attack.
Two British men aged 45 and 47 arrested on Wednesday in connection with the attack have since been released on bail.
Police believe the arsonists may have been recruited online, mirroring a strategy by Russia’s Wagner Group who hired a group of men to carry out an arson attack on a Ukrainian business in East London in 2024.
In that case, the ringleader, Dylan Earl, 21, from Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, was recruited by an automated Russian chatbot on an encrypted Telegram app, which he subsequently used to hire the rest of the gang.
Police are still trying to verify whether the ambulance attack was the work of an alleged Iranian terror group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, which has claimed responsibility.
The development comes as police continue to investigate whether Iran hired criminal proxies to torch four Jewish community ambulances in Golders Green on Monday
The new group appears to have recruited teenagers as young as 17 to carry out a series of recent attacks in Europe including an arson attack on a Rotterdam synagogue.
Roger Macmillan, a military and security professional who spent years countering Iranian state-sponsored threats, said teenagers were engaging with Iranian-linked Telegram accounts.
He told the Times: ‘The messages will be in English and in Hebrew because they are looking to recruit Jewish people or Israelis who are disaffected, as well as English-speaking people who need money.
‘It’s as blatant as that, it’s straight out of a Russian playbook. They offer British teenagers money and say I’ll give you £500 – it’s too easy.
‘They’ll ask kids to photograph this, film that. You don’t know what that is used for.
‘The person doing the actual recruitment probably won’t know who he’s doing it for, because somebody else is controlling him.’
He added: ‘The people that they are hiring to do the jobs are probably not your highly trained operators who have been trained to go and do these attacks.
‘These are kids, these are vulnerable people who have been co-opted on the promise of, “do this, video it, and we will give you £500”.’
MI5 spy chief Sir Ken McCallum has previously warned anyone thinking of carrying out Iran’s ‘dirty work’: ‘If you take money from Iran, Russia or any other state to carry out illegal acts in the UK, you will bring the full weight of the national security apparatus down on you. It’s a choice you’ll regret.’
