British police have charged three Iranian men with offences under the National Security Act after a major counter-terrorism investigation, the police said on Saturday.
British counter-terrorism police arrested eight men including seven Iranians earlier this month in two separate operations in what the British interior minister called some of the biggest investigations of their kind in recent years.
Mostafa Sepahvand, Farhad Javadi Manesh, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori were charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, the police said in a statement.
The foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran, they added. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has previously said he was "disturbed" to learn that Iranian citizens had been arrested by British authorities.
The British government has placed Iran on the highest tier of its foreign influence register, requiring Tehran to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK.
Iranian nationals arrested in counterterrorism operations
London’s Metropolitan Police arrested a 31-year-old Iranian national in May in connection with a series of counterterrorism arrests, police announced.
The suspect is the fourth Iranian to be arrested in this investigation and was detained at a residential home in North-West London under section 27 of the National Security Act (2023).
In a separate series of arrests, another four Iranian nationals were arrested by the Met after a counterterrorism investigation suggested they were planning an attack on London’s Israeli embassy.