View from London | The National

Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau

Energy market insiders who gathered in a vast underground ballroom in central London this week were united in support of the new emphasis on resilience in the oil industry.

The duration of the US-Iran war has changed the industry from "a just-in-time to a just-in-case" sector, TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne told the Energy Intelligence Forum.

Smoke rises from the Khurais pumping station on the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia, after it was struck by Yemen's Houthis. AFP

Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, said that throughout the crisis conditions, the producer has not cancelled one committed delivery. Thanks to the now restarted East-West pipeline and other key supply routes, Aramco has been able to compensate for the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Nasser was one of many executives to explain how a resilient set-up can keep energy flowing.

Japanese executive Takayuki Ueda, president of Inpex, said buyers now had wider considerations concerning diversification, as well as resilience.

“What matters for our buyers is security of supply,” Mr Ueda said. “They usually point out diversification of supply sources is important. However, they also emphasise the security and resilience of the entire supply chain.”

For Vaclav Bartuska, the Czech ambassador to the UK and a veteran voice of the 2022 gas supply crunch that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, shifts in how the world meets its energy needs are inevitably determined by the new era of Cold War-style politics. Also his country's energy envoy, Mr Bartuska sees resilience and vulnerability as twin forces.

"We are much more careful about what's happening in our countries, trying to deter another attack [while at] the same time not to escalate too much," he said.

A Times Square-style monitor tracking the rise of Iran-related prosecutions in the UK could soon be merited.

The scope of Tehran's plotting and execution has been underestimated. Think of the Iranians orchestrating these events with an approach similar to the writer or producer of a Netflix drama. The intelligence officials behind the plotting and recruitment in Tehran are not merely dabbling in the lower reaches of gaming chat forums and messaging channels. There is method behind the recruitment and mobilisation.

The Iranian regime might consider the US’s recent withdrawal of its bombers from the UK’s RAF Fairford to be a success. Reporting from the US indicates that a bizarre escapade on the Fairford perimeter, involving three vans with contraband or stolen fuel and detected at midnight, was in fact a wider plot to swarm the base and inflict damage on American strategic assets.

Answering the inevitable question of how Iran can mete out damage thousands of kilometres away is something that should have been done a long time ago.

The UK courts are facing several cases of people who have been arrested for allegedly attacking Jewish communities and Iranian dissidents in the country. There have been a few convictions, too, with more likely to come. Given the long lead times of the court process in the UK, there is much more to be revealed, but this will be too late to boost deterrence among the public.

From left, Mostafa Sepahvand, Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori and Farhad Javadi Manesh. Alamy

Just on Tuesday three Iranians who spied on UK-based dissident journalists on behalf of their country’s foreign intelligence service appeared in a London court. Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi Manesh, ⁠46, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, are accused of carrying out surveillance on Iran International. It is the latest in a series of prosecutions involving the channel.

Spare a thought for Kaveh Moussavi, a human rights lawyer in the UK who has dedicated his life to bringing Iranian officials to justice, but despite the rising atrocities at home is seeing precious little progress.

Mr Moussavi prepared the criminal complaint that led to the arrest in 2019 of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian prison official who had travelled to Sweden. He was later found guilty of war crimes in connection with mass executions of political prisoners in Iran in 1988, and sentenced to life in prison, but was returned to Iran in a prisoner swap deal in 2024.

More than a dozen people with multibillion-pound fortunes have left or loosened ties with Britain in favour of more favourable tax regimes, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed.

Families worth at least £120 billion have left since Labour took power and introduced a series of tax changes. That's equal to more than half the wealth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

David Lesperance, a lawyer and former non-dom who describes his job as integrated tax and migration adviser, told The National the key damage being done to the UK tax take was down to the departure of billionaires, rather than millionaires.

"The simplest way of thinking about the impact of these super golden geese is that a billionaire contributes the same number of golden eggs as 1,000 millionaires in Income/Capital Gains Tax, VAT, property tax, consumer spending, direct and indirect employment, philanthropy," Mr Lesperance said.

And that £120 billion figure does not include David Reuben, who was reported at the weekend to have relocated to Monaco, taking his £9.9 billion fortune with him. His brother Simon has been based there for about 40 years.

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