Omid Shams lives with a six-second countdown stalking his thoughts about his safety and relationship with his homeland.
A life in exile from Iran means changing daily routines, looking over his shoulder in the street and even checking under cars with a mirror before getting in.
Iranian dissidents living under police protection like Shams have spoken to The National about the death threats and intimidation they face from Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other regime agents.
The IRGC has a proven track record of issuing death threats on social media, hacking phones and seeking to shock by throwing animal corpses into homes. Courts have convicted its agents of assassinations and plots to kill exiled dissidents.
For those who speak out against the regime and documenting what goes on in their own country, the shadow of Tehran's plotting is never far away.
Iranian activity in the UK and Europe, directed by the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, is of increasing concern to security services.
A hallmark of this has been Iran's increased use of proxies, often criminals or teenagers recruited online, who are prepared to carry out attacks in return for money. Only this week, a Norwegian teenager was found guilty of agreeing to carry out a murder for Iran after being recruited by Tehran-backed Swedish criminals.
Mr Shams, 43, a human rights lawyer and writer, told The National this is a new and troubling development for Iranian dissidents living in the UK.
“Six seconds is enough to kill a person with a knife here in London and it happens every day,” he said. “It's very difficult to trace a teenager who would knife me on the streets back to the Iranian state. It doesn't matter if these assassinations are unsuccessful. What matters is that these are so cheap and they can increase the number of threats.”
Iran’s intimidation of opponents in the UK has included threats against Iran International, an independent TV station based in London, which reports on the country.
A group calling itself Harakat Ashab Al Yamin Al Islamiyya, which translates as the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, claimed responsibility for a series of attacks earlier this year, which included one on Iran International TV in London.
The station was forced to temporarily close its operation in the UK’s capital 2023 after receiving threats, including to assassinate two of its presenters.
An Austrian of Chechen origin was jailed for three and a half years for plotting a potential attack on the station. Two Romanians were recently jailed for stabbing Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati, a friend of Mr Shams.
“This kind of threat and pressure comes like a constant noise,” said Mr Shams. “When you're working, when you're doing things, when you're outside, when you're meeting your friends or family, it’s always there.”
Mr Shams left Iran around 13 years ago, initially to live in Denmark under a programme for human rights lawyers and writers who felt under threat from the regime. He moved to the UK where he obtained a doctorate in human rights law and has since been documenting human rights violations.
As a result of his work, he has received threats, usually in the form of messages from unidentified accounts.
But recently, Iran has been more brazen and started making direct death threats via IRGC-linked social media accounts.
Mr Shams was featured in a video of regime targets that also included Mr Zeraati and his former Iran International colleague Sima Sabet.
The video clip features Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the late Iranian supreme leader, talking about the dangers of those who are trying to deviate from the values of the Iran revolution, followed by religious music, he said.
“Then you see logos of some of the Iranian media outlets based outside the country with bullet marks in them, and then you see pictures of some of the journalists, human rights activists, including me, with bullet marks on our pictures.”
As well as direct threats, he believes Iranian taunts are beginning taken a bizarre and sinister turn.
During his interview with The National, Mr Shams produces a photograph of a dead animal lying on the floor at the home of a fellow dissident.
“Something that happened to a friend of mine – a dead animal was dismembered and then thrown into the house,” he said. “For their children to see that, it will traumatise them for life.”
London's Metropolitan Police has given advice about what to do when out on the streets. “Eventually, you understand that this kind of caution wouldn't actually protect you, so you just decide to live your life.”
Along with colleagues, he is looking to build an organisation that will catalogue Iranian threats against the UK, including members of the diaspora.
This will also involve engagement to bring together the Muslim, Jewish and Iranian diaspora communities in face-to-face meetings, which he says will raise awareness, increase unity and strengthen resilience in the face of threats from the regime.
Mr Shams said the aim is to reduce exposure to intimidation, manipulation and the division aimed at polarising British society, for example by radicalising the Muslim community or inciting hatred towards the Jewish community.
He also wants to build a database to help UK policymakers understand the Iranian regime’s language, ideas and decision-making in their proper political, religious and historical context.
While the new legislation designating the IRGC as a threat to the British state under new anti-terrorism-style powers is welcome, Mr Shams believes the UK's leaders are still not fully aware of the level of threat posed by Iran.
He said there is a gulf between the “very capable, very knowledgeable officers who know exactly what Iranians are actually intending to do” and “how the political leaders in the United Kingdom understand them”.
Hacked phone
Mahshid Nazemi was living in a centre for asylum seekers in a small village in France when she was sent a picture of the desk in her room from an unknown account.
She says it was a clear message from the Iranian regime to say, “we even know where you sit, where you work”.
The human rights activist, 38, has spent time in prison and left Iran in 2016. She initially lived in Turkey before she was forced to leave in the face of regime harassment.
When she first received the photo, she suspected it might have been someone in the camp who had taken a screenshot of a video call.
But eventually the police said they suspected it was a phone breach, so they took her mobile and other digital devices, Ms Nazemi said.
Eventually, police found malware on her phone and moved her to a more secure location with 24-hour CCTV coverage.
Ms Nazemi was moved to four places all told but in one, an intruder broke in and cut off the head of a small statue of a sheep she had. Nothing was stolen by the intruders.
“I was really terrified because I had just got out of Turkey, moved to France and thought I would be safe here,” she said. “I was shocked that even in a small village I could be found and threatened.”
She has also been sent numerous threatening messages from what she believes to be agents of the regime. One which she has shared with The National says: “You will be executed. We will deal with you when the time is right.”
Ms Nazemi says the experience “severely affected her mental health and created a lot of anxiety”.
Paranoid parking
Another Iranian, based in the UK, has revealed the measures he takes as part of his daily routine.
Before getting into his car, he checks under the vehicle with a mirror, for any “tracking devices, anything unusual, that may or may not be explosive”. Recently, this has included nails in his tyres.
“The neighbours think I’m completely doolally going around with a mirror underneath my car,” says Atur, whose real name has been withheld at his request.
Once he gets going, Atur says a level of paranoia kicks in, meaning he will suddenly change his route or drive round a roundabout several times in case he is being followed.
“I don't have an ordinary life that other people might experience. On an average drive, I'm sure my heart rate is a lot higher than your average driver. I don't enjoy a drive.”
He uses tracking devices to tell friends and family where he is. When he returns home, he first checks to see if the CCTV monitoring his property has been activated. He also circles a parking spot he has identified a couple of times to be on the safe side.
“Once I've decided that it's safe, then I get out quickly, get inside the building. Once the door is locked behind me, then that's when my heart rate starts dropping.”
One day Atur found that his car had been broken into by someone using a device that could allow access to a keyless vehicle.
But nothing was taken other than the tracking device and couple of other digital items, including the memory card for the in-car CCTV.
“That meant that I had to beef up my own security, so I use different upgraded security devices now,” he said. “But in terms of the psychological effects of that, I was thinking 'OK, they know where I live, they know where I drive and they have proven that they can act.'
“Which means if they want to, they can get their hands on me and this was at the time of attacks on Iranian-British journalists like Pouria Zeraati and Sima Sabet.”
Atur also fears the regime’s recruitment of proxies that he says appear “to have very little regard to the law of the land that they're living in”.
Aside from living with the fear of physical attack, all three dissidents said they also have to deal with threats to their families back in Iran, as well as looking on as thousands of fellow Iranians have been killed in protests.
“When you look at what your fellow Iranians are paying as a price, you'll think this is nothing, but still it is a perpetual feeling that you or your family could be a target of something,” says Mr Shams.
“I believe that if they can, they will kill all of us, and it's not something that I would just say lightly. I really believe that because I've seen as an Iranian how far this state can go.”
