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UK charge links to Iran
A Greek national living in Munich, Ioannis Aidinidis, 46, was charged Friday with assisting Iranian intelligence in targeting a U.K.-based journalist at the Persian-language broadcaster Iran International, according to Türkiye Today.
“House of Commons Library: The biggest current threat from Iran in the United Kingdom is the physical threat against opponents and critics”
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement, "The country to which the allegations relate is believed to be Iran and the allegations relate to the targeting of a UK-based journalist working for Iran International," and police said there was "no belief that there was any wider threat to the public."
Denmark’s national security and intelligence service PET said Iran had become an increasingly significant component of the terrorist threat facing the country, while PET head Finn Borch Andersen said Denmark’s overall threat level remained at four on a five-point scale.
Andersen said the nature of threats had "changed significantly in character" and that state actors had become increasingly important, adding that "we assess that this applies in particular to Iran" and that Iran poses a threat especially to Israeli and Jewish interests and certain Iranian dissidents in Europe, including Denmark.
Parliament denies talks
In Iran’s political messaging amid the war in the Middle East, the president of the Iranian Parliament denied any negotiations with the United States, with CNews stating that Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said there had been 'no negotiation' with the United States.
CNews quoted Ghalibaf saying, "No negotiations have taken place with the United States; false information is used" while it also described the war as entering its 24th day on Monday.
CNews also said the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaïl Baghaï told IRNA that the ministry had received, via 'friendly countries', messages conveying a U.S. request for negotiations aimed at ending the war, but that "no negotiation had begun since the start of the war."
Separately, the BBC reported that a House of Commons Library report titled 'Iran's Threatening Activities in the United Kingdom' warned that the biggest current threat from Iran in Britain is the physical threat against opponents and critics, and that the report described Iran’s threat as no longer limited to its nuclear program or support for armed groups and terrorist organizations.
Europe-focused intimidation and retaliation
The BBC said the House of Commons Library report warns about Iran’s cyber activities and describes a broader pattern of transnational repression in which actors connected to the Iranian government harass or threaten people abroad to silence, coerce, or obtain information.
“When journalist and political activist Hossein Razzagh left Iran a year ago to seek refuge in Germany, he thought he had definitively escaped the regime of the Islamic Republic”
The report also says it mentions harassment of BBC Persian staff and their families, as well as Manoto TV and Iran International, and it cites the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee’s findings that Iran poses a broad, persistent, and unpredictable threat.
In parallel, El País described an account of Iranian intelligence pressure in Europe, saying that when journalist and political activist Hossein Razzagh left Iran for Germany and arrived in Düsseldorf, "various media outlets sought him out" and he began receiving threats with the address of his residence and the location of his son's school.
El País wrote that Iranian intelligence services wanted him to know that they knew everything about him, despite being more than 5,000 kilometers away from his country, as Razzagh said his phone began to receive "extremely unsettling messages".
