Craig Murray: UK Intel’s Fake Terror Plots

Islamophobic propaganda is being ramped up to drive public support in the U.K. for the genocide in Gaza and a forthcoming attack on Iran.

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

Back in the “War on Terror” days, the U.K. security services fabricated multiple fake terror plots. There was, for example, the 2009 Easter Bomb Plot in Manchester, taking entire front pages of newspapers.

Gordon Brown as prime minister hyped it as a “very big terror plot.” It was a total fabrication, nobody was convicted and it eventually emerged that the trumpeted “bomb-making ingredient” the police confiscated from kitchens was sugar — in normal quantities.

The Great Ricin Plot in 2003 was again kitchen obsessed, and the media that ran screaming headlines about the discovery of ricin did not bother to later report that the amounts the police announced they had discovered turned out to be the almost undetectable trace which might be found in any kitchen.

The propaganda was the purpose, all ramping up Islamophobia to justify the Western destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

When the Manchester Arena attack eventually did happen, it turned out that MI5, the domestic intelligence service, had been the perpetrator’s sponsor and he and his father had been ferried from Libya by the British armed forces. Sponsorship of terrorism abroad is always likely to result in blowback at home.

[See: How the West’s War in Libya Spurred Terrorism in 14 Countries and Why We’re Never Told Why We’re Attacked]

The propaganda is now being ramped up again to promote the Islamophobia intended to drive public support in the U.K. for the genocide in Gaza and a forthcoming attack on Iran.

MI5 Head Ken McCallum is arguably the most prolific and sustained liar in the history of the U.K. public service. He has not yet generated the deaths with his lies that Alistair Campbell caused, but give McCallum time for his Goebbels-like repetition to pay off. McCallum has a much more compliant media landscape to work with than existed a quarter of a century ago. 

I have to remind myself that my continued outrage at the destruction of millions of very real and ordinary people in the Middle East from 2003 onwards, to secure hydrocarbons for rich and evil men and based on total lies about Iraqi weapons, is something extremely vivid and fundamental to me, but the average university student was not even born at the time.

Myth of American Benevolence

The myth of a “good” West continually self-propagates. The media distracts and obfuscates in a constant and prolonged process of attrition of the truth.

It is tempting to believe that the genocide in Gaza has awoken a public consciousness which may be a historic break of the system. But it is already becoming harder to access true news from Gaza. Fewer images are available as the murder of countless citizen journalists and the throttling of internet in Gaza takes effect.

Social media suppression of the reach of pro-Palestinian accounts and massive boosting of Zionist accounts are reinforced by systematic state persecution of pro-Palestinian voices.

Even as Israeli ministers openly proclaim their genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, European ministers continue to deny it. I am reminded of Harold Pinter’s great acceptance speech for his Nobel prize, speaking in particular of the lies and atrocities of the Iraq War:

We are still standing up, but the lies keep coming, the exploitation keeps coming and the murder keeps coming.

Now let us return on to the arch-propagandist Ken McCallum and his latest invented plot. This is a biggie — the largest state-promoted terrorism scare for 20 years [of an Iranian plot to attack the Israeli embassy in London].

I’m no fan of the regime in Tehran.

But I can’t for the life of me see how this would be in their interests. Whereas I can see how it would be in the interests of others. https://t.co/qgutYjEpKX

— Richard Sanders (@PulaRJS) May 8, 2025

As usual, there is not any actual evidence. This straight propaganda piece from The Guardian accidentally makes that plain:

Of course, the weapons the police are searching for may yet magically turn up under the bed. I recall the search of Charlie Rowley’s house after the death of poor Dawn Sturgess. The police searched the home for five days, looking for a small vial of liquid, with no luck. Then it amazingly turned out that the perfume bottle had been sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter all along!

That perfume bottle obviously had miraculous qualities and could materialise and dematerialise at will, because it had also sat undetected inside a regularly emptied charities’ donation bin for over three months.

I suppose an RPG may yet materialise under the settee in the current search; when the British police and security services are involved, the laws of physics are frequently suspended.

As usual, Ken McCallum’s “five plots” last year had not resulted in any convictions, or indeed evidence, and in fact the claim was modest for McCallum — who has claimed that MI5 had foiled “20 plots” since 2022. Even that was not his record.

McCallum reminds me of the man walking around St. James’ Park scattering rubber bands “to keep the elephants away.” When told there are no elephants, he stated “See, it works, doesn’t it?” McCallum has kept vast amounts of Iranian terrorism at bay in a similar fashion.

But, unusually, in 2023 one of McCallum’s fictional “Iranian plots” did result in an actual conviction, and I would like you to look at this one as a window into the twisted psyche of the security services.

Saudi-Funded Iran International 

In a crowded field, Iran International is probably the world’s dodgiest media channel. A Saudi Arabian-funded niche Farsi language operation, it caters to those Iranians who support Israel, support the restoration of a shah and support Saudi Arabia.

As I said, it is very niche.

Yet this tiny media operation was set up with a Saudi investment of a quarter of a billion dollars. Yes, you did read that properly, $250 million. Just where all that money really went is an interesting question. There have been persistent rumours of money laundering and of ties to Eastern-European-organised crime.

There was a brief period, after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, when the U.K. media would print disobliging things about the Saudis. In that short window, this article appeared in The Guardian.

Iran International, perhaps unsurprisingly, specifically supports a Sunni Arab terrorist organisation operating within Iran: the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz – ASMLA. This is a Sunni ethno-nationalist group conducting armed struggle for the secession of certain Arab districts of southern Iran from the predominantly Persian and Shia state.

ASMLA has exactly the same covert backers as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria: namely, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Israel and Western security services.

In September 2018 ASMLA carried out an attack in Ahvaz which killed over 60 people (ISIS also claimed the attack, but the two organisations are linked). Iran International carried an interview with an ASMLA spokesman which very definitely supported ASMLA, and where he insisted on ASMLA’s right to armed resistance and specifically claimed responsibility for the attack as a victory.

In an era where Western activists are routinely arrested for supporting “terrorism” if they oppose the Gaza genocide, you might imagine that this would be an offence by Iran International. But supporting Western- and Saudi-backed terrorists is not only tolerated, it is official British government policy, and in response to complaints the U.K.’s Office of Communications (OFCOM) found that Iran International were entitled to interview the advocate of the right sort of terrorism.

So how does this relate to the single conviction from all of Ken McCallum’s alleged terrorist plots?

Somebody from Iran International has been convicted of glorifying terrorism, right?

Don’t be silly. Iran International is pro-Saudi and pro-Israeli and in December 2023 it opened a second HQ in Washington, D.C., with additional C.I.A. funding. Remember they are on the same side as HTS. Iran International are the “victims of terrorism” here.

The conviction under the Terrorism Act was for taking photographs of the Iran International HQ building in Chiswick.

In December 2023 Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, a Chechen with Austrian citizenship, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for photographing Iran International HQ in Chiswick, which was deemed to be in preparation for a terrorism offense.

The prosecution case was specifically that Dovtaev was operating on behalf of the Iranian government.

No Evidence of Link to Iran 

This is the important bit. No evidence of any kind was presented in court of connections between Dovtaev and Iran. There was nothing on his phone and nothing from surveillance. He had not spoken to any Iranians or mentioned Iran.

The prosecution argued — and I kid you not — that Dovtaev was Chechen, which is in Russia, which is geopolitically allied to Iran, and therefore he was probably acting on behalf of Iran. That was it. It really, really was.

This ultra circumstantial argument is a reach enough anyway, but ignores several individual factors.

Dovtaev is a Sunni, therefore not aligned to Iran. He is definitely not one of those Chechens allied to Russia. His family arrived in Austria as refugees from the Chechen War of Independence and he is an anti-Russian Chechen nationalist and an Austrian citizen. He was actually wearing Chechen Independence gear when caught photographing the building.

The prosecution argument — that Dovtaev must be working for Iran because of Russia’s links to Iran —  is therefore complete and utter nonsense. But it fits the official anti-Iranian narrative we are being force-fed. And it was rammed down the throats of the jury.

I might add that the evidence that Dovtaev was indeed casing the joint for some ulterior purpose was very strong, and I do not doubt it. But there was no evidence of any kind that it was for Iran, or for terrorism, as the prosecution alleged. The judgment is not published, which is why I do not link it.

That is the one conviction for Iranian terrorism for all McCallum’s false claims — and no connection at all to Iran was shown.

Which leads me to the only other actual arrest — though not yet conviction, until this week — in all of McCallum’s so-called Iranian terrorist plots. Two young Romanians were extradited from Bucharest to London for stabbing in the leg an employee of … you guessed it, Iran International.

Nandito Badea, age 19, and George Stana, age 23, were arrested for stabbing in London the Iran International presenter Pouria Zerati. The assault was captured on CCTV.

Propaganda With a Purpose

Now, you might remember that I said at the beginning that there are alleged links between the dodgy finances of Iran International and Eastern-European-organised crime? Well, the story reported from Bucharest is that the defendants admit to the stabbing but say it was a warning with regard to a business debt.

Which, when you think about it, makes far more sense. The CCTV shows that the attackers could have killed the victim, but stabbed him in the leg instead. That is a gangland warning, not a state operation.

The notion that Iran is hiring random teenage Romanians to slightly wound people is a nonsense. Furthermore, does not the “business dispute” narrative also make infinitely more sense in the case of Dovtaev, who had no links to Iran?

The gangster scenario would fully explain why he would keep his lips firmly sealed about who really hired him and what he was doing, even at the cost of a harsher “terrorism” sentence.

So that is all the concrete evidence, or lack of it, in existence about McCallum’s multiple Iranian terrorist plots. This is now, of course, augmented by this new screamed narrative about a planned Iranian attack on the Israeli embassy in London.

As the Gaza genocide proceeds, you could write a long essay about the ethics of attacking an Israeli embassy (and Israel has not shown restraint in attacking other nations’ diplomatic premises, but I shall let that pass as not relevant to the current case).

You have to ask, “cui bono?” Iran has shown tremendous restraint in avoiding being dragged into a wide war over Gaza in the face of continued attacks, and is in the midst of a tense negotiating process over its nuclear programme. The idea that, at this moment, it would attack the Israeli embassy in London is crazed.

However, the narrative very strongly serves the U.K. interest, as support for the genocide in Gaza dwindles further, especially among Labour Party supporters. And of course such an attack, or even the allegation of a planned attack, also boosts the perpetual Israeli narrative of victimhood.

MI5’s arrangement of this fake plot now is totally predictable; in fact I have been predicting false-flag operations since the genocide started.

My guess is that there is probably an agent provocateur operation at the base of this, where some poor young men have been entrapped into agreeing with wild statements or a fantasy plan. Alternatively, as usual it will prove to be a complete propaganda invention to influence public opinion at a key moment.

It is worth noting that the United States has these last few days currently concentrated four B-52 and six B-2 bombers on Diego Garcia. This is an extremely rare concentration and indicates preparedness for a major operation; Iran is the most likely target.

This kind of force is very much greater than anything deployed against Yemen to date. This anti-Iranian propaganda is not being ramped up right now to no purpose.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

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This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

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