Allied Intelligence — 2026-08-02

Leaked MI5 Emails Reveal Directors Orchestrated Campaign to Designate IRGC as Terrorist Organization While Acknowledging Limited Operational Benefit

BLUFLeaked emails, if authenticated, expose MI5 leadership driving proscription and surveillance policy for institutional leverage rather than operational necessity, undermining the government's stated rationale for both measures.

Leaked correspondence reviewed by The Grayzone shows current MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and former director Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller privately coordinated, beginning in 2023, to push then-Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper toward proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organization, a step the UK government took on July 13 1. McCallum's public case for designation rested on his claim the IRGC sought to assassinate ten British citizens in 2022, which drove a unanimous January 2023 parliamentary vote urging proscription, even as he privately told Cooper the "direct operational benefit" was likely "modest" but "sensible to contemplate" 12. The emails also show McCallum weighing whether to extend proscription powers beyond the IRGC to other "state-affiliated factions" such as the defunct Russian Wagner Group, and crediting Manningham-Buller's "support (and stamina)" for passage of the National Security Act, legislation that criminalizes unauthorized disclosures of state information 123. Press TV and Islam Times, both citing The Grayzone's reporting, note the correspondence links McCallum's public warnings about Iranian threats to a subsequent seven-percent increase in UK intelligence spending, after Manningham-Buller praised the media coverage his October 2024 threat briefing received 23.

Analysis
Leaked correspondence, sourced solely to The Grayzone and unauthenticated by the two outlets republishing it, indicates MI5 shaped rather than merely informed the IRGC proscription and the National Security Act rather than responding to independently justified operational needs, undercutting government framing of both as threat-driven decisions. McCallum's admission that proscription's direct benefit was modest, set against Manningham-Buller's explicit link between his public threat briefings and the subsequent spending increase, suggests budget and legislative advocacy drove threat messaging rather than followed from it. The underlying Iran-linked plot claims remain evidentially unresolved and could still be vindicated by further corroboration, and the leak itself may reflect a source seeking to discredit MI5's surveillance and proscription agenda through selective release rather than a neutral policy disclosure.

3 sources