Iranian-linked HAYI claimed credit for the Golders Green stabbings. Their language was deliberate: Zionists, they said, had been targeted by their ‘lone wolves’
By Roger Macmillan
Within hours of Wednesday’s attack in Golders Green, in which two Jewish men were stabbed in broad daylight, the Iranian-linked proxy group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) claimed credit. Their language in a video broadcast on regime-affiliated channels was deliberate: Zionists, they said, had been targeted by their “lone wolves”.
The group, however opportunistic in their claim, was not describing spontaneous fury. They were advertising a model: state-directed operatives who self-identify as acting alone, offering Tehran deniability and a quandary for the British authorities.
In June 2024, a man who stormed a Golders Green supermarket brandishing a knife, demanding staff declare their views on Israel and Palestine, was given two suspended sentences. Iran’s security chiefs were paying attention. An environment where targeting Jewish people draws a suspended sentence is what HAYI’s recruitment model was built for. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and home-grown Islamists, have been emboldened by the UK’s laissez-faire approach to antisemitism. That’s how we’ve ended up with this appalling situation in which a tiny community is under siege.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has said recent attacks are a perfect illustration of why new law is needed. The existing framework was designed for tackling organisations that recruit ideologues, not for the IRGC, which directs violence from a distance through a disposable proxy brand.
Hall’s proposed legislation would enable the home secretary to designate groups such as HAYI as foreign intelligence proxies, allowing prosecution under the National Security Act even where the operative has no knowledge of who is paying them. Parliament must pass this without delay. And the proscription of the IRGC matters too. The US designated it a terrorist organisation seven years ago. The EU followed this year. Britain is one of the few major western nations that has not acted, limiting our ability to seize assets, restrict travel and co-operate with allies on IRGC-linked financial networks.
Sir Keir Starmer confirmed that legislation will be in the King’s Speech this month and calls this the government’s fight. That framing is correct. But words of condemnation, as the chief rabbi says, are no longer sufficient. HAYI is already telling the world its lone wolves are active in London. The question is whether parliament gives law enforcement the tools to treat them as what they are: agents of a hostile state.
Roger Macmillan is a former director of security for Iran International TV and a counterterrorism analyst.
This op-ed originally appeared in The Times.