Early on Monday morning, three men in black masks carried out an arson attack in Golders Green in North London against four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity. Hatzola provides free emergency medical responses and transport to hospitals — for everybody, not just Jews, despite some of the disinformation circulating online. The attack was soon claimed in a Telegram post by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya (Hayi) or “The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right”. Hayi has ties with the Islamic regime that rules Iran, and the British Government has appropriately assigned counter-terrorism authorities to lead the investigation.

Hayi first surfaced in Europe in Belgium on 9 March, claiming responsibility for an explosion set off outside a synagogue in Liege. The group took credit for a similar attack against a synagogue in Rotterdam five days later, before targeting a Jewish school and a US bank — both in Amsterdam — in the space of three days. Hayi has also claimed an attack on an unspecified target in Greece on 11 March, and a couple of days ago released a video threatening the Bank of America in France.

There was never much doubt about what Hayi is. The organization’s videos are released through Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” media ecosystem, and the rhetoric closely matches Iranian propaganda. What’s more, the government’s model is based on creating “deniable” fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), such as Hezbollah or the Houthis, to absorb the retaliation for terrorism that would otherwise fall on Iran. The creation of online façades for the IRGC is a well-established tactic that is particularly in evidence in Iraq, where recent fronts for Iran’s Shi’a militias include Ashab al-Kahf and Saraya Awliyah al-Dam.

Given that the Iranian theocracy is a consistent sponsor of terrorist groups, global attacks should have been expected in retaliation for the American-Israeli military campaign launched at the end of last month. Even before Hayi appeared, IRGC spy-terrorist cells were busted in Qatar, Britain, and Azerbaijan, while planning attacks against Jews in the latter two cases. Over the past week, further IRGC terrorist networks have been uncovered in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s targeting of Britain is likely to increase. The motivation is there, as the clerical regime has a special paranoia about Britain being responsible for everything. This fear has only been exacerbated by Britain permitting its bases to be used by the US, first to repress Iranian missile capabilities and now to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

In terms of means, Iran has a sizable infrastructure within Britain of loyalist mosques and other Islamic institutions that can be used for recruitment and incitement, and the IRGC is adept at, for example, utilizing criminal gangs. There is a well-documented history of the IRGC coopting organized crime syndicates for espionage and terrorism in countries including Britain, Australia and Germany. Since the present war began, a mafia group known to be a cut-out for the IRGC threw a bomb at the US Embassy in Norway.

A great failure of Western policy towards the Islamic Republic has been to play along with its shell game, such as responding to the Houthis’ piracy against international shipping in Yemen rather than in Iran. The British Government can course-correct, if and when Iran is shown to be responsible for Monday’s Hayi attack, by targeting its response directly against Tehran.