Danish intelligence says Iran poses increased terror threat

Danish intelligence said Friday that Iran was playing a larger role when it came to the threat of terrorism against the Scandinavian country, adding that the threat assessment was mirroring global developments.

The Danish national security and intelligence service, PET, said the overall threat to Denmark remained at four on their five-point scale, but added that in recent years the threats had “changed significantly in character.”

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“Over the past year state actors have become increasingly important to the terror threat. We assess that this applies in particular to Iran, which poses a threat especially to Israeli and Jewish interests as well as certain Iranian dissidents in Europe, including Denmark,” Finn Borch Andersen, head of PET, said in a statement.

“The threat from Iran emanates from the Iranian intelligence services, which make use of both criminal networks and the recruitment of operatives in Europe to plan and carry out attacks,” he added.

In neighboring Sweden, the Swedish Security Service (Sapo) has also accused Iran of using criminal gangs to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli interests and Iranian opposition figures in Sweden – a claim Iran has denied.

According to PET, the escalation in animosity between Iran and Israel in recent years, and since the launch of strikes by Israel and the United States against Iran in February, has reverberations for the threat level against the Nordic nation and across Western countries.

“This war has had indirect consequences for the threat landscape in the West, including Denmark,” PET said.

PET said that in the past, threats were primarily driven by “non-state actors,” such as militant extremists, and that while state actors now played a larger role, the threat from other groups persisted.

“Several attacks in the West over the past year have unfortunately also demonstrated that classic threat actors such as militant Islamists and right-wing extremists remain among the most serious challenges in the threat landscape,” Borch Andersen said.

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