The heads of MI5 and the FBI have issued an unprecedented joint warning that the threat of a domestic terrorist attack could rise as a result of the crisis in the Middle East.
The counter-terror chiefs said Jewish communities and organisations, as well as other groups, may face a heightened danger from lone actors, Hamas militants and Iran on British or US soil.
Ken McCallum, the director general of Britain’s domestic spy agency, MI5, said there was a risk that “self-initiated” individuals who may have been radicalised online might respond in “spontaneous or unpredictable ways” in the UK after the terrorist attacks on Israel and what could become a drawn-out conflict.
Speaking before a public summit of intelligence chiefs in California, and seated alongside the FBI director Christopher Wray, McCallum said there was also a danger that terror groups or Iran may step up violent activity and that Jewish individuals or organisations could be targeted by neo-Nazis and Islamists.
“There clearly is the possibility that profound events in the Middle East will either generate more volume of UK threat, and/or change its shape in terms of what is being targeted, in terms of how people are taking inspiration,” he said.
On Monday night, a gunman shot dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels. The Belgian prosecutor’s office originally said there was no evidence the attack was related to the Israel-Gaza conflict but on Tuesday a spokesperson said a link was being explored.
France was put on its highest level of security alert on Friday after a suspected radical Islamist killed a teacher and injured three others in the north of the country.
The incidents come at a time of heightened counter-terror concern, given the scale of violence unleashed by Hamas’s attack on Israel 10 days ago.
Wray, the FBI director, said terrorist threats were fast evolving in the US and that “we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or other foreign terrorist organisations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil”.
He said that over the past week there had been “an increase in reported threats” against “Jewish Americans or Muslim Americans, institutions and houses of worship” in the US, reiterating a warning he issued on Saturday to police chiefs in San Diego.
McCallum was less specific about reported threats in the UK, but said MI5 was already “particularly attuned” to the threat of lone actors, and that “in the particular case of Jewish or Israeli individuals or entities” there was a potential risk from “those of an Islamist extremist mindset and those of an extreme rightwing, antisemitic or neo-Nazi type mindset”.
McCallum and Wray were speaking at the start of a meeting of spy chiefs from the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, hosted by the FBI in California. Also present were the leaders of domestic agencies from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and all five were set to appear in public together for the first time later on Tuesday.
The intelligence chiefs planned to discuss what Hamas’s attack on Israel earlier this month meant “both in the region and in our homelands,” McCallum said, as well as the threat from Chinese economic espionage.
Wray and McCallum both condemned Hamas’s attack on Israel. Wray said he wanted to express “once again how horrified I am and continue to be by the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel” while his UK counterpart said “these were monstrous attacks which saw 1,400 people murdered” including at least six British citizens.
He indicated that MI5 was “playing a role” in efforts with Israeli and other authorities to locate British hostages captured by Hamas fighters. The FBI has already said it is working to locate and identify unaccounted-formissing Americans.
There was also a specific warning from the British spy chief about Iran, which has warned it could be willing to take “pre-emptive action” against Israel ahead of an anticipated ground invasion of Gaza.
“Plainly events in the Middle East sharpen the possibility that Iran might decide to move into new directions,” McCallum said. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that could include the UK, but we are already operating at a high level of Iran-generated threat.”
Last year, the MI5 head warned that Iran had made 10 kidnap or death threats against people based in the UK in a year. This week, staff at the BBC’s Persian news service in London said they feared walking outside alone because they were at risk of being harassed by the Iranian authorities.
