Two men convicted of assisting Iranian intelligence in plots against UK-based journalists
Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, and Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, have been found guilty of conduct intended to assist Iran’s intelligence services in a plan to inflict violence on people in the UK. Between August 2024 and March 2025, the two men carried out surveillance and reconnaissance on Iran International journalists Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini, as well as Jonathan Turner, a founder member of UK Lawyers for Israel.
The men visited addresses linked to their targets, recorded photographs and videos, and researched them online. Sepahvand used ChatGPT to locate Pourmohsen’s home and communicated on WhatsApp with an alleged handler, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander called Amin. He expected to receive £150,000 for carrying out a violent attack and said he was willing to “finish off” a target. Hosseini was sent a photograph of his car with a threat that it would explode when he next started the engine; he subsequently left his home and stopped working as a standup comedian, while threats also forced his family to leave Iran.
The case illustrates the growing use of proxies recruited online to conduct operations for hostile states. Sepahvand and Manesh entered the UK illegally—one in the back of a lorry and the other in a small boat—and both claimed they did not intend to carry out killings. Prosecutors said the surveillance amounted to spying directed at dissidents and critics of Iran’s Islamic Republic.
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