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Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has said the UK faces a “long and sustained threat” from Iranian plots and accused “hostile states and competitor cities” of spreading claims that London is unsafe.
During a visit to the US, London’s police chief also told the FT that the Met, which had lost public trust after a series of scandals, had helped to rebuild its reputation through the “precise” targeting of criminals and by going after the rich and powerful.
Rowley was speaking from San Francisco after two Iranian men appeared in court in London on Thursday, charged with spying on sites and people linked to Israel and the UK capital’s Jewish community on behalf of the Iranian intelligence services.
Separately, Police Scotland said on Thursday that an Iranian man and a Romanian woman had been charged over an attempt to enter the HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane near Glasgow, home to the UK’s nuclear missile-carrying submarine fleet.
Rowley said: “I’m not going to talk about sensitive threat and intelligence conversations with the FBI. But clearly we have a long and sustained threat from the Iranian state.”
Rowley referred to MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum’s annual threat assessment in October, in which he said there had been more than 20 Iran-backed plots in the UK over the preceding year.
Rowley said some of the plots were against members of the Iranian diaspora opposed to the country’s Islamist government.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter from anti-government TV station Iran International, suffered a knife attack on a London street in March 2024. Two Romanian nationals — Nandito Badea and George Stana — are due to stand trial over the attack starting in May.
Some of the other threats, Rowley said, were over potential attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets. He said: “That’s a very relevant and rolling threat.”
Rowley said it was hard to tell how much the threat would escalate because of the current war in the Middle East between Iran and an alliance of Israel and the US.
The commissioner, who has been head of the Met since 2022, was speaking at the end of a trip to the US where he met officials from the FBI and other US law enforcement organisations to discuss shared threats and joint investigations. He also discussed the use of technology in crime-fighting with West Coast tech companies.
In a speech in New York last week, Rowley said: “There is a myth that London is not safe promulgated by hostile states, competitor cities and sometimes magnified by ever more polarised local politics.
“It is false. UK public polling shows that Londoners believe their city is safe, while people outside London influenced by social media rather than experience are more likely to think it is not.”
Rowley told the FT that “eyes widened” during his US visit when he reeled off statistics about the relative safety of London compared with other cities.
He said the homicide rate in Paris or Toronto was about half as much again as London, while in Berlin, Brussels or New York it was around three times higher. He said social media had magnified “false” claims about the British capital’s safety.
Rowley noted that most British police officers are unarmed, a surprise to some in the US, but that firearm homicides in the US ran at about 80 times the rate of the UK.
He said questions about obtaining access to unredacted versions of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein files had come up “in the margins” of his meetings in the US.
Rowley said it was important to obtain original documents for the various investigations. Many of the millions of documents released by the US Department of Justice contain redactions, often of critical details such as the names of potential sex-trafficking victims.
Referring to Epstein-related probes into Lord Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, he said: “If people can see the police aren’t afraid of taking on the powerful, that’s an important issue for public trust and confidence for people to step forward over other matters.”
Last week, Rowley told ABC News that a 2010 email sent by Mandelson to Epstein about a €500bn bailout of the euro was part of the investigation into the former Labour cabinet minister.
Mandelson was released on bail in February after being arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
He has denied any criminal wrongdoing and said he never acted for personal gain. He is no longer on police bail but has been released under investigation.
Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over his links to Epstein. He has consistently denied either sexual or financial wrongdoing.
During his visit, Rowley also met US driverless taxi company Waymo, whose service is due to launch in London later this year, to discuss issues relating to road traffic law and to reassure himself that the autonomous vehicles would get out of the way if a “blue light” vehicle was approaching.