UK to Place Iran on Highest Tier of Foreign Influence Register

On 4 March 2025, Reuters report­ed that the Unit­ed King­dom would require Iran to reg­is­ter all polit­i­cal influ­ence activ­i­ties in the UK, plac­ing Tehran under height­ened scruti­ny due to increas­ing­ly aggres­sive behav­ior. The arti­cle begins:

Britain said on Tues­day it would require the Iran­ian state to reg­is­ter every­thing it does to exert polit­i­cal influ­ence in the UK, sub­ject­ing Tehran to an ele­vat­ed tier of scruti­ny in light of what it said was increas­ing­ly aggres­sive activ­i­ty. Secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Dan Jarvis said he would put Iran’s state, its secu­ri­ty ser­vices and the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps into the enhanced tier of an upcom­ing reg­is­tra­tion scheme designed to pro­tect against covert for­eign influ­ence. “The Iran­ian regime is tar­get­ing dis­si­dents, and it is tar­get­ing media organ­i­sa­tions and jour­nal­ists report­ing on the vio­lent oppres­sion of the regime,” Jarvis told par­lia­ment. In Novem­ber, the head of Britain’s domes­tic spy agency MI5 said since Jan­u­ary 2022, his ser­vice and British police had respond­ed to 20 Iran-backed plots to kid­nap or kill British nation­als or indi­vid­u­als based in the Unit­ed King­dom regard­ed by Tehran as a threat. The For­eign Influ­ence Reg­is­tra­tion Scheme (FIRS), expect­ed to launch in the sum­mer, will require “the reg­is­tra­tion of arrange­ments to car­ry out polit­i­cal influ­ence activ­i­ties in the UK at the direc­tion of a for­eign pow­er”, a gov­ern­ment brief­ing doc­u­ment said. The “enhanced” tier of scruti­ny allows a senior min­is­ter to require cer­tain coun­tries and organ­i­sa­tions to reg­is­ter a broad­er range of activ­i­ties to pro­tect Britain’s interests…

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Key Points:

• The UK will place Iran on the high­est tier of its For­eign Influ­ence Reg­is­tra­tion Scheme (FIRS) due to aggres­sive polit­i­cal influ­ence activities.
• Secu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dan Jarvis high­light­ed Iran’s tar­get­ing of dis­si­dents and media orga­ni­za­tions, neces­si­tat­ing enhanced scrutiny.
• Since Jan­u­ary 2022, MI5 and British police have respond­ed to 20 Iran-backed plots to kid­nap or kill indi­vid­u­als in the UK.
• The FIRS will require Iran to reg­is­ter all polit­i­cal influ­ence activ­i­ties, with fail­ure to com­ply being a crim­i­nal offense.

The GIOR has been cov­er­ing Iran’s mul­ti­fac­eted approach to influ­ence oper­a­tions, lever­ag­ing cyber activ­i­ties, affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions, and state-con­trolled media to advance its glob­al objectives.

Dis­claimer: The GIOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real word” photography.