UK court finds two Iranian men guilty of spying for Iran

A jury in south London convicts two men of working for Tehran

A jury at Woolwich Crown Court in south London found two Iranian men guilty on Thursday of spying for Iran, after a six-week trial built on surveillance of dissident journalists and a lawyer in London. Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, and Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, were convicted of engaging in conduct likely to assist Iran’s intelligence service, under Britain’s National Security Act 2023.

Sepahvand was also found guilty of preparatory conduct, after prosecutors said he was prepared to commit a violent attack against at least one of the targets. Manesh was cleared of that second charge. A third defendant, Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, was acquitted of all charges.

The two convicted men were remanded in custody and will be sentenced at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, on 17 December 2026. Frank Ferguson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This was a calculated operation to spy on those critical of the Iranian regime.”

The surveillance, the messages and the £150,000 demand

Prosecutors said the pair carried out surveillance and reconnaissance between August 2024 and March 2025 on people the Iranian regime regarded as targets in Britain. The named targets were Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini, journalists for Iran International, the Persian-language broadcaster based in London that Tehran has banned, and Jonathan Turner, a founding member of UK Lawyers for Israel. A fourth target, a media production professional, was not named.

The court heard the men visited addresses linked to their targets, took photographs and video, and researched them online, including with ChatGPT. Videos, images and text messages on their devices showed Sepahvand watching targets’ homes and workplaces, and cell-site data placed him at a surveillance location in London in late 2024.

In one message presented in court, Sepahvand asked his contact in Iran for £150,000 to “finish [the target] off” once the person had been found. The court also heard WhatsApp exchanges with a handler identified as Amin. Sepahvand said he had been coerced; prosecutors called that claim bogus and said he was a willing participant seeking payment and the fixing of a theft conviction in Iran. Manesh said he had not known the surveillance was meant to assist Iranian intelligence.

All three men were arrested in May 2025 and charged days later. The Home Office said they had arrived in Britain irregularly between 2016 and 2022.

What remains unknown after the verdicts?

The full list of targets has not been made public. Beyond the three people named in court, a fourth target, a media production professional, has not been named, and it is not clear how many people the surveillance covered beyond those identified in court.

Tehran has not publicly responded to the verdicts. It is not known whether the handler identified in court as Amin faces any action, or whether the messages and payments traced in the trial point to further arrests.

The sentences are unknown until 17 December. The two men were convicted under the National Security Act: section 3, assisting a foreign intelligence service, carries up to 14 years, and section 18, preparatory conduct, of which only Sepahvand was convicted, carries up to life imprisonment. The 14-year figure often cited belongs to a different framework, supporting a proscribed organisation after the Guard’s proscription in July, an offence neither man was charged with.

The first Iranian convictions under Britain’s new security law

Police said the convictions were the first of Iranian nationals under the National Security Act 2023, the law passed to counter threats from foreign states. The case is therefore the first public test of the act against an Iranian network, and the verdicts show a jury accepting that surveillance of journalists in London, directed from Tehran, amounts to assisting a foreign intelligence service.

The Metropolitan Police said it was the fourth case in recent years involving direct threats to Iranian journalists in Britain, and that it is working hard to keep them safe. Iran International’s journalists have lived under threat for years, and the trial put the cost of that threat on the record: one target had already left home and moved temporarily into a hotel in west London for safety.

The timing sharpens the stakes. Britain proscribed the Revolutionary Guard in July 2026, and the verdicts land in a year when the confrontation between Iran and the West has repeatedly spilled into British courts, with a plot linked to Iran against a United States-run military airbase in England among the cases the police have disclosed.

Four dimensions of a surveillance operation

Geopolitics: the verdicts arrive in the middle of a sustained UK-Iran confrontation. London proscribed the Revolutionary Guard in July, and the trial showed the state using its newest law against the network the proscription was aimed at. Prosecutors had to prove the men’s conduct was intentional and that they knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that their reconnaissance was likely to be useful to foreign spies, without having to name a particular foreign intelligence service. The Bureau has tracked that confrontation as it spilled across the region, from the tanker seizures in the Strait of Hormuz to the warnings of further strikes.

Demography: the defendants and the targets share a profile, Iranians living in London, some arrived irregularly between 2016 and 2022, others exiled journalists. The trial is about a diaspora caught between a regime that regards its critics as targets and a host state still learning how to protect them.

Technology: the evidence was digital, ChatGPT searches for home addresses, WhatsApp messages to a handler, photographs and video on phones, cell-site data placing a defendant at a surveillance location. The operation was low-tech in method and high-tech in proof, now the standard shape of a hostile-state case in a British court.

History: the Metropolitan Police count, a fourth case involving direct threats to Iranian journalists, places Woolwich in a pattern, not an exception. Tehran has targeted dissidents abroad for decades; what is new is the legal machinery catching up.

What the verdicts change, and what they leave open

Sentencing on 17 December will set the first price for this offence against Iranian nationals, and prosecutors and defence lawyers will read it as the benchmark for the next National Security Act trial.

For Iran International and the journalists it employs, the verdicts change little day to day: the threat that forced one target out of their home has not been removed by two convictions, and the broadcaster’s security costs will stay high as long as Tehran treats its staff as targets. Iran International’s standing in the wider standoff, from Tehran’s shifting public positions to the strikes on Iranian soil, keeps its London newsroom in the crosshairs.

Diplomatically, the case adds pressure to a relationship already under strain. London will cite the verdicts as proof of Iranian hostility on British soil; Tehran, which called the arrests disturbing in May, has yet to answer the convictions.

The wider effect is deterrent and diagnostic at once: the verdicts tell would-be intermediaries that surveillance for a foreign service carries a prison term, and they tell the police that the evidence trail is enough to convict without catching a handler in the room.

What happens at the Old Bailey on 17 December?

The two men return to the Central Criminal Court on 17 December 2026 for sentencing, and the terms imposed will be the first measure of how seriously the courts treat this offence. Appeals, if any, would follow sentencing.

The Metropolitan Police has said it is working to keep Iranian journalists in Britain safe, and the fourth case in its count suggests the work is continuing rather than complete. Whether further arrests follow from the messages traced in this trial is the open question for the coming weeks.

Tehran’s response, when it comes, will show whether the regime treats the verdicts as a bilateral incident or as part of the wider standoff with the West. For the journalists named in court, the verdicts are a measure of protection, won in a courtroom.