Have we just witnessed an Iranian attack on British soil? Overnight, four ambulances were burned on the premises of Hatzola, a Jewish charity in Golders Green that operates a fleet of medical response vehicles in north London. The vans were parked beside Machzike Hadath synagogue on Highfield Road. The Metropolitan Police are said to be investigating the incident as an anti-Semitic hate crime. It might well be yet another example of the post-October 7 globalisation of the intifada and Britain’s domestic anti-Semitism problem. Research from the Community Security Trust records more than 300 anti-Semitic incidents every month in the UK, including attacks on Jewish-owned businesses, vandalism at synagogues and even desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Just six months ago, two British Jews died in the terrorist attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester.
Terrorism analysts have noted similarities between Ashab al-Yamin’s communications and those of Tehran-funded terror group Hezbollah
But there are too many similarities with recent attacks across Europe, which is why the police and security services will be seriously examining the claim of responsibility issued by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right). Not only does this hitherto unheard-of outfit purport to have carried out the Golders Green attack, it also claimed responsibility for the bombing of a synagogue in Liege, Belgium, on 9 March; a Molotov cocktail attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam on 13 March; and a similar incident at a Jewish school in Amsterdam later that same day. While a new organisation, terrorism analysts have noted similarities between Ashab al-Yamin’s communications and those of Tehran-funded terror group Hezbollah. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre reports that a video released by Ashab al-Yamin tells the West: ‘Final warning to the peoples of the world, especially in the European Union, to distance yourselves immediately from all American and Zionist interests and everything connected to them.’
In an interview with France 24 two weeks ago, Iran’s deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi warned European countries that any nation which ‘joins America and Israel in the aggression against Iran, they will be also legitimate targets for Iran’s retaliation’. The Henry Jackson Society recently cautioned that ‘activating sleeper agents already embedded across Europe’ would be ‘one of the most effective weapons at Tehran’s disposal’, pointing out that in excess of 25,000 Iranian nationals have entered Britain via boat over the last eight years. While many will be deeply hostile to the regime they escaped, ‘among them will inevitably be individuals acting on behalf of the Iranian state’. The Dutch say they are investigating whether Iran was behind the arson attacks. Last Thursday, an Iranian dissident who celebrated the death of Ayatollah Khamenei on social media was shot in public in Schoonhoven, in the west of the Netherlands.
The Iranian regime is eager to intimidate allies of the United States from joining the current American – Israeli campaign in the skies over Tehran. It is also, and this is not nearly understood enough by Western liberals, sincerely, theologically and ideologically committed to murdering and terrorising Jews. All over the world: Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, London – wherever it can find them. If the Golders Green attack is Iran-linked or aligned, it will have nothing whatsoever to do with Gaza or the Palestinians or the foul lie of genocide concocted by Israel’s well-funded enemies, pumped out through their propaganda machines and dutifully echoed by clueless Western politicians. Iran is a Shia Muslim theocracy, it is bent on achieving dominance of western Asia, which it believes would be underwritten by a ballistic nuclear programme, and will kill anyone who gets in its way or whose death might intimidate weak countries and weak leaders from standing up to Tehran’s blueprint.
There are those who believe these matters are alien to us, concerns of foreign peoples under foreign skies. There are others who understandably do not wish to repeat the catastrophes of Iraq and Afghanistan. The first perspective amounts to little more than anachronistic naïveté, a holdover from earlier times when there weren’t, for example, 25,000 Iranians coming ashore, unvetted and in some cases unvettable. Nations which neglect to enforce their borders cannot expect to shelter behind them in times like these, when a global threat and a domestic one can be one and the same. The second perspective is serious and substantive; it cannot be waved away. But it must contend with mounting evidence of hostile Iranian activity inside the UK.
A December 2025 briefing from the House of Commons Library states: ‘Those targeted by Iran in the UK include dissidents, journalists, regime opponents, Israelis, Jews and sectors including government, travel and universities.’ In recent days, an Iranian man has been charged in connection with an alleged attempt to enter HM Naval Base Clyde (Faslane) in Scotland. Earlier this month, four men – one Iranian and three British-Iranian dual nationals – were arrested following an investigation into ‘suspected surveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community in the London area’. In November 2024, British Army soldier Daniel Khalife was found guilty of spying for Iran, and MI5 says it disrupted ten Iranian plots to kidnap and/or kill British people in 2022; in 2025, the number was 20. Denying that there are enemies at the gates doesn’t make them go away.
If the attack on Hatzola was the work of neo-Nazis or British-born Islamists, the governing class will have to face up to the scale of the anti-Semitism problem in this country. If it was an operation by Tehran or its proxies, our leaders can no longer pretend the threat from Iran doesn’t involve us. Iran is involving us, and brazenly so.
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