Our perception of counterterrorism operations is often shaped by the media. The shaky footage of gunmen in balaclavas; journalists breathlessly speculating over SAS involvement; forensic examiners standing in doorways of suburban semis; the Home Secretary, offering a grave but anodyne statement. She can’t say too much for legal and security reasons, but nonetheless, the threat was both imminent and grave. Altogether, it all speaks to something urgent, frantic, with Britain saved by some 11th hour derring-do.
Behind the scenes, though, these operations are actually far closer to movie-making. The terrorists are the actors, albeit unaware of their starring roles. Like a real-life Truman Show, their performances are watched, tracked and analysed by a small army of detectives, surveillance operatives, technical specialists and intelligence officers. Finally, the director calls “Action!” and armed officers blow doors off hinges. Surprised-looking suspects are bundled into police vans. Then, because no bombs exploded, and no civilians died, we switch off. Keep scrolling. Continue with our lives. Which is as it should be.
Over the weekend, police held seven Iranian nationals in a textbook operation. The arrests were for offences under the Terrorism Act and the new National Security Act (2023). Though the suspects were split into two unspecified groups, reports suggest they were only “hours away” from launching an attack. The target? Sources suggest it was possibly a synagogue. Or, given Tehran’s propensity to pursue dissidents abroad, a member of the Iranian diaspora. Whatever the truth, the potential for state-sponsored terrorism presents a sophisticated challenge for Britain’s security services — especially when balanced with so many other threats, and when internal instability only continues to soar.
On and off, I worked in counterterrorism policing and counterextremism for over a decade. And as a single cog in a vast machine, I witnessed firsthand how the threat evolves, from the IRA to Al-Qaeda. I’ve also seen how our security apparatus occasionally behaves like First World War generals: fixated on fighting the last war. After all, mass casualty, cell-based Islamist terrorism differs markedly from the lone-wolves of more recent times. Then there are the loose cannons, neo-Nazis like David Copeland or internet-radicalised killers like Axel Rudakabana. The latter, especially, now consumes much of counterterrorism’s operational bandwidth. Yet CT policing is also expected to deal with them all, like a chef asked to prepare sushi one minute and a Baked Alaska the next.
It’s no wonder, sometimes, that they hanker after signature dishes. Is the flavour of the month now state-sponsored terrorism, possibly involving the infamous Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)? If so, they may be in for a struggle, not least in the way it could herald the rise of asymmetrical warfare on Britain’s streets. Sometimes known as “grey zone” operations, it inevitably means espionage and paramilitary activities blend into policing. My very first operation was a stark reminder of how blurred things can become, as I watched paramedics working on the body of an IRA man shot dead by police.
Later, I witnessed the challenges of investigating state-sponsored criminality during the Alexander Litvinenko murder inquiry. Wider political and diplomatic considerations impact on operational decision-making. Noses are tapped. Leads are declared “not in the public interest”. We can see this already, with the Foreign Office arguing the IRGC shouldn’t be proscribed as a terrorist organisation (even though it unambiguously is). Our diplomats view the well-connected IRGC as an influential conduit into the Iranian regime. The politics, given Labour’s attempts to tread a fine diplomatic and political line over Gaza, are extremely sensitive for the Starmer government — a government, its critics allege, which is strategically over-reliant on Muslim votes.
To be fair, not all foreign spies possess the efficiency of Bond movie villains. As I discovered during the Litvinenko case, the Russian FSB were slapdash, operating flashily in plain sight. We hardly made it difficult for them; London in the 2000s was a sordid playground for dirty Russian money. MI5, preoccupied with mass-casualty Islamists, also took its eye off the Russian threat. Nonetheless, Litvinenko’s killers were hardly discreet, leaving traces of radioactive poison on an airliner and in a hotel room. Then there were the Russian military intelligence operatives who, as a cover story, declared an improbable interest in the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. In fact, they were trying to poison the defector Sergei Skripal, as open-source intelligence quickly proved. A recent trial of a Russian-sponsored spy ring consisting of Bulgarian agents was similarly amateurish. The hapless agents were nicknamed “Minions” by their handlers, after characters from the children’s movie Despicable Me.
Sadly for British intelligence officers, Iran poses a more substantial challenge than the GRU or FSB. The Iranians are, arguably, more disciplined and committed. There’s also a significant diaspora community in the UK. And though many British-Iranians are implacably opposed to the Mullahs, cover opportunities for agents are easier to find. The current legality of the ICRG also means regime front organisations can operate with relative impunity. No doubt the Home Office will be squaring up to ever-obdurate Foreign Office mandarins, seeking to pursue diplomacy whatever the cost.
Then there’s the issue of motive and proportionality; the Russians, although shameless, intuit a line in the sand when murdering their own abroad. They are reckless, as they were when they released poison into the hotel where they met Alexander Litvinenko, but their targets are usually strategic. Though Putin is happy to crush potential turncoats, I suspect he wouldn’t back mass-casualty terror. The Iranians have no such qualms, considering themselves at perpetual war with the West and particularly Britain: the “Little Satan” to America’s plus-sized version. Jews are another target. Iranian-backed terrorists blew up a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85. I therefore find myself unsurprised to learn the regime is suspected of trying something similar in the UK, with MI5 publicly warning of hostile Iranian intelligence activity in this country.
The authorities face another challenge too. Terrorism — and counterterrorism — is a destabilising issue in our increasingly Balkanised society. Countering state-sponsored threats involves a rapidly evolving kind of hybrid conflict. It’s a shadowy, difficult and sometimes controversial arena for the police and security services to operate in. Human rights laws and “proportionality” will be tested to their limits. Mistakes, as happened at Stockwell, will inevitably happen. Politics, usually of the grubbier variety, will be engaged. And, tragically, innocents will die if terrorists succeed. As the IRA famously said of their attempt on Margaret Thatcher’s life, the police have to be lucky every time. The terrorists? They only have to be lucky once.
Such terrorism, especially when linked as it is to religion, also has a knock-on effect to what we used to optimistically call “community cohesion”. The truth is that there are many in Britain who would be equivocal about an attack on the country’s Jews. Some would even support it. Chief constables, politicians and the Home Office are acutely aware how an attack might well provoke public disorder, as it did in the summer of 2024. As MI5 Director General Ken McCallum has warned: “There clearly is the possibility that profound events in the Middle East will either generate more volume of UK threat and/or change shape in terms of what is being targeted.”
No wonder, then, that radicalisation and extremism will continue to flourish on all sides. Are the police ready for these grim consequences? Of allegations of two-tier policing? As I’ve written before, if the “Prevent” programme is anything to go by, I doubt it. As it is, I would suggest we’re in an early-Seventies scenario, one where the situation in Gaza replaces Vietnam in helping to radicalise a new generation of activists. Only a tiny proportion need to convert their anger to violence to prompt widespread societal disruption.
Even worse, mainstream British policing is in a sorry state. Counterterrorism is well-funded, but draws its personnel directly from existing forces. Labour’s plans to create a national counterterrorism force doesn’t change the fact it will continue to recruit from the same pool of demoralised, inexperienced and poorly-led officers. Specialist officers aside, the societal impact of terrorism — such as the public disorder, which terrifies senior police and politicians — is still dealt with by conventional police officers using conventional methods. Counterterrorism and extremism is a broad, interconnected spectrum. To continue the movie comparison I made earlier, if an operation was a Hollywood movie, the hard yards of counter-extremism intelligence are a niche BBC 4 documentary, and even the biggest studios can only film so many epics at once.
“It will continue to recruit from the same pool of demoralised, inexperienced and poorly-led officers.”
If my experience is anything to go by, anyway, there’ll be barely time for the production team to enjoy a beer before they’re summoned to work on one sequel, and then another. Each time, there’ll be new stars. New plots. New locations. The directors and producers will have unrealistic expectations and deadlines, cursing the studio’s endless and contradictory demands. Meanwhile, the production team will follow their unsuspecting stars through viewfinders or rifle sights. They’ll listen to covert signals intelligence. They’ll meet in backrooms with nervy informants. And they’ll all be thinking the same thing: will we be lucky this time, or will they?
And so the counterterrorism show will trundle on, from the CCTV trawls to the criminal trails at the Old Bailey. Yet on the streets, and on the internet, angry voices will amplify, and the causes of extremism will only persist. The overlooked police and intelligence service officers who deal with it are the runners and extras of counterterrorism. And we should wish them luck too: over the years ahead, they’re surely going to need it.
