UK Prime Minister and the Interior Minister Suella Braverman meets police and security chiefs on Monday to discuss “accelerated” terrorist risk to the United Kingdom in the wake of Hamas’s enormous terrorist attack against Israel.
An emergency meeting of the so-called ‘Cobra’ security committee — named for the room in which it takes place in Downing Street, Cabinet Office Briefing Room A — is taking place on Monday, chaired by the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Suella Braverman. As reported by The Times, the committee is to consider the serious knock-on effects the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, which killed over 1,400, is having on Britain.
Top police officers and security services representatives will meet with the politicians and discussions could conceivably lead to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre increasing the national terrorism alert level. It is presently at level three of five, ‘substantial, meaning an attack is “likely”. It could be boosted to ‘severe’, “an attack is highly likely”, or ‘critical’ meaning an attack is highly likely in the near future.
The meeting follows remarks by Britain’s top police officer, who cited a rise in “hate crime”, “accelerated” terror threats, and even Iranian agents in the country which are said to be working to foment unrest. Per reports, counterterrorism police have privately discussed “a campaign of online disinformation and Iranian operatives being physically present at protests” in the UK.
Top Cop Sir Mark Rowley had earlier told the UK’s Sky News that: “This is a particularly challenging time – an overlay of threats. When you’ve got state threats from Iran, you’ve got terrorism being accelerated by the events, and hate crime in communities.”
Hamas launched a devastating surprise attack on Israel earlier this month which saw over 1,400 killed, some in the most barbaric circumstances imaginable, with cases of rape, infanticide, and beheadings reported. Israel has responded to the assault with a counter-offensive of its own, although now three weeks later the anticipated ground assault on Gaza seems to only just be beginning.
The attack and counter-attack has seen a surge in tensions in the Western world, particularly after a wave of pro-Hamas demonstrations were staged in Western cities. According to Rowley, there has been a 14-fold increase in antisemitic incidents in London since the attack, and a “nearly threefold” rise in anti-Muslim incidents.
