Two Iranians found guilty of spying on journalists in UK as part of plot against dissident TV station

Résumé détaillé

The trial exposed an operation in which Iranian agents offered money and inducements to so-called 'proxies' in order to target their enemies in the UK but never found their targets.

Published: 11:39 GMT, 12 November 2026 | Updated: 11:59 GMT, 12 November 2026

A second-hand car salesman and an associate have been found guilty of spying for Iran after they were hired to track down and attack a lawyer and journalists opposed to the regime.

The trial exposed a haphazard operation in which Iranian agents offered money and inducements to so-called 'proxies' in order to target their enemies in the UK but never found their targets.

It is the third time in three years that individuals have been recruited by Iran to target journalists but the first to involve Iranian asylum seekers.

Previous investigations have involved criminals recruited from Chechnya and Romania to fly into the country, including one group who stabbed a journalist in a street in Wimbledon, south-west London.

Iran has also recruited British-born proxies to launch arson attacks against Jewish targets in April and was accused of being behind a security scare at RAF Fairford in September.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, a former gym owner and body builder with a criminal past, was hired to act as a hitman, to perpetrate 'serious violence' in return for a payment of £150,000.

He had arrived illegally in the back of a lorry in 2016 and was assisted by two other Iranians - Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, from Kensal Rise, and Shapoor Noori, 57, from Ealing - who had arrived in the UK by small boat and claimed asylum in 2022.

Sepahvand was sent instructions by two intelligence officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) but only received £5,000 and was arrested on May 3 last year before he located any of the people he was supposed to attack.

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