Two Iranian men convicted in UK of spying on exiled journalists for Revolutionary Guard

Two Iranian men were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday of spying for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) after prosecutors said they carried out months of surveillance on journalists working for the London-based Farsi-language broadcaster Iran International, along with a lawyer and a media professional. A third defendant was acquitted of all charges, according to a statement from Counter Terrorism Policing.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, of St John's Wood, was found guilty of two offences under the National Security Act 2023: assisting the IRGC, and a more serious charge of carrying out surveillance intending that serious violence be committed against someone in the UK. Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, of Kensal Rise, was convicted of the first offence but acquitted of the second. Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, of Ealing, was acquitted on both counts after a trial that lasted six weeks.

What the men were accused of doing

Prosecutors said the three conducted surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research between August 2024 and March 2025, targeting two Iran International journalists, a lawyer working for UK Lawyers for Israel and a media production professional. The men were first identified and charged by the Crown Prosecution Service in May 2025, more than a year before the verdicts, after being arrested at their home addresses.

Police said Sepahvand led the operation and passed instructions to Manesh, frequently exchanging messages with Iranian phone numbers linked to the IRGC. Investigators recovered briefing-style material on the men's phones containing photographs of the targets, their workplace addresses, vehicle details and information about their pets. Sepahvand expected to be paid around £150,000 for his role and hoped Iranian intelligence would help resolve a theft conviction against him in Iran, officers said.

• Surveillance activity: August 2024 to March 2025
• Arrests: 3 May 2025, at the men's home addresses
• Trial length: six weeks, at Woolwich Crown Court
• Evidence base: 534 gigabytes of phone data, including Farsi-language messages and voice notes
• Sentencing of Sepahvand and Manesh: 17 December, at the Old Bailey

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, Counter Terrorism Policing's senior national coordinator, said investigators had to translate thousands of Farsi messages and cross-reference them against mobile phone cell-site data "to build a compelling record of the surveillance." Sepahvand told the court he had acted under duress; Manesh said he had photographed one target's home because he was looking for a new place to live. The jury did not accept Sepahvand's account and rejected the duress defence in full for the charge on which he was convicted.

Part of a wider pattern, police say

Counter Terrorism Policing described the case as the latest in a recurring campaign against Persian-language media based in Britain. It follows the 2023 conviction of an Austrian national for carrying out reconnaissance of Iran International's offices, for which Reporters Without Borders said at the time that "Iran will stop at nothing to intimidate journalists, abroad just as at home." It also follows the conviction in June of two Romanian men for the 2024 stabbing of Iran International presenter Pouria Zeraati outside his home in Wimbledon; a court later sentenced the pair to a combined 20 years in prison, with the judge finding the attack was committed for or on behalf of Iran.

Britain has brought a handful of prosecutions under section 18 of the National Security Act 2023, which criminalises preparatory conduct intended to enable serious violence on behalf of a foreign state, since the law took effect. The wider Act also created a new offence of assisting a foreign intelligence service, the charge on which Sepahvand and Javadi Manesh were convicted, and introduced a foreign influence registration scheme requiring anyone acting for certain overseas governments to declare the arrangement to the Home Office. Parliament passed the legislation in 2023 partly in response to a string of assassination and kidnap plots that British security officials attributed to Iran, Russia and other states operating through intermediaries rather than their own intelligence officers.

Wednesday's convictions add to a broader run of UK cases this year accusing Iran-linked networks of using recruits, including people with only temporary leave to remain in Britain, to carry out surveillance and violence by proxy. Separately, two men have been charged over an alleged plot targeting a US-run air base in eastern England, a case still before the courts and unrelated to Wednesday's verdicts.

Reaction and the threat to journalists

Iran International, whose staff were among the surveillance targets, has operated under heightened security since 2022. The channel, which launched in 2017, is watched by millions of Persian speakers inside Iran, where its journalists in exile have long said they face intimidation intended to discourage independent coverage of the Iranian government. Several of its presenters and their families have been assigned personal protection by British police over the past three years.

"The threat from hostile states to the UK is increasing and Iran continues to adapt its approach to using 'proxies' … our message to anyone being asked to carry out activity by foreign states, or even unknown entities online, is to think again," Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans said in the force's statement.

Evans said Iranian intermediaries are often recruited online with promises of large payments that go largely unpaid, while the recruit "takes on all the risk." She added that the case was the fourth in recent years involving a direct threat to Iran International journalists specifically, saying counter-terrorism officers were "working hard to keep them safe." Iranian officials did not respond publicly to Wednesday's verdicts; Tehran has consistently denied directing attacks or surveillance operations against dissidents and journalists in Britain in earlier, comparable cases.

What happens next

Sepahvand and Manesh are due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on 17 December. Noori, who was acquitted on both counts, faces no further action over the case. The Crown Prosecution Service has not said whether it intends to bring further charges connected to the investigation.

Evans said counter-terrorism officers were "working relentlessly" to identify and arrest others responsible for "state sponsored criminality" in Britain, language that points to further National Security Act prosecutions as other inquiries progress. For Iran International and other London-based Persian-language outlets, Wednesday's verdicts were presented by police as confirmation that earlier warnings about targeted surveillance were well founded, even as Evans acknowledged that the threat from Iranian proxies is continuing to evolve rather than recede.