UK intelligence officials are talking about ‘Iranian’ sleeper cells. Let’s have it right. Those claims are unverified and should be reported as such. But implicit in these warnings is an acceptance, by UK spooks, that PM Keir Starmer has entered the UK into a war with Iran.

INews reported on 3 March that UK spies were concerned Iranian agents already in the UK could carry out attacks. Anything uttered by unnamed ‘security sources’ must be taken with extreme caution.

It might not be the case here, but one of the key media stories of the War on Terror era is that journalists often fail to ask the key question: Why are spies telling me this?

Don’t be bedazzled, mainstream media journos. Intelligence agents, agencies and their spokespeople are not your friends. Contest everything they say. Yet within this commentary there do seem to be useful details:

A Cabinet Office source said that while Tehran will be looking to respond within the West, the UK is a “significantly lesser target” compared to the US.

The official added that UK intelligence officers tasked with monitoring Iranian espionage in Britain are actively monitoring sleeper cells to get ahead of any hostile reaction.

They’re clear: we are a target because of our role in the war. In short, they accept we are in one.

One official said:

I can confidently say that MI5 is going to be closely monitoring these units. They will be looking at who is coming and going [in and out of the UK] over the next few weeks and months.

Blowback, they said, may take the form of cyber attacks. As INews reported:

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the UK’s cyber agency, advised local organisations to review security methods in response to the evolving events in the Middle East.

The guidance, issued on Monday, warned there was “almost certainly a heightened risk” of cyber threat for organisations and entities that have a presence, or supply chains, in the Middle East.

“Iranian state and Iran-linked cyber actors almost certainly currently maintain at least some capability to conduct cyber activity,” the NCSC notice warned.

We are at war with Iran

We can take these reports or leave them. Clearly there are Iranian intelligence agents in the UK, just as there are MI6 spies in Iran as well as those of Mossad, the CIA and God knows who else. This is part of the normal day-to-day of international affairs.

In Afghanistan as occupying soldiers, me and my colleagues were told to accept that even our close allies were spying on us.

The degree of threat any alleged ‘sleeper cell’ poses, however, is entirely debatable and unverified.

But what is important here is what is implicit. The intelligence services appear to accept we are at war with Iran. This is despite Keir Starmer’s thin, mealy-mouthed claims that the UK’s role will only be defensive.

As a military veteran and an observer of conflict, I say wars simply don’t work like that. Especially global wars of the scale and scope of the one we are stumbling into today. To be self-important for a minute:

Starmer’s claim that the UK is only doing the defence part is perverse.

If you deploy an aircraft carrier to war and it has other warships escorting it, those ships are not somehow magically uninvolved in the war.

The UK is at war with Iran.

— the great Keithulhu (@jjgjourno) March 3, 2026

Time to organise

And let’s be clear why we are here. For the sake of the truth and our own sanity.

The US-Israel attacked Iran on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

At its best, one of the roles of intelligence is to provide disinterested factual analysis. Often — though certainly not always — it is politicians who then spin it. So let’s be honest with ourselves. The UK is at war with Iran.

Opposition is already gathering inside and outside parliament:

I have tabled a Bill to require Parliamentary approval for the foreign use of British military bases.

We must learn the lessons of the past — and stop our Prime Minister from dragging Britain into another catastrophic, illegal war. pic.twitter.com/ZSfHM2fKp8

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 4, 2026

Even the intelligence services tacitly accept the UK is stumbling deeper into yet another Middle Eastern war. And they accept that it is putting us all at risk. Journalists and the public always have to parse what they say carefully. But implicit in these warnings about ‘sleeper cells’ and hidden ‘assets’ is something of the truth.

The UK is already at war. Those of us who see the lives of people in the Middle East as of equal value to anybody else’s need to start organising fast.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

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