A British criminal court on Friday handed down multi-year prison terms to two Romanian citizens found guilty of knifing an anti-regime broadcaster outside his residence, a targeted assault the presiding judge explicitly attributed to the directives of the Iranian government, The Associated Press reported.
Pouria Zeraati, a prominent host for the London-headquartered, opposition-affiliated network Iran International, survived being stabbed in the thigh during the March 2024 ambush outside his suburban Wimbledon home.
Zeraati later left the UK and moved to Israel, saying he feels “much safer" in the Jewish state.
Following a jury trial last month, a 21-year-old and a 25-year-old were convicted of wounding Zeraati with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
During the sentencing proceedings at London's Central Criminal Court, Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb emphasized that the “evidence overwhelmingly points" to the plot being orchestrated at the behest of Iranian leaders.
“I am sure that this was an attack carried out for and for the benefit of a foreign power," she stated.
British counter-terrorism and intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that Tehran is deploying criminal proxies on UK territory to wage a campaign of intimidation against independent opposition journalists and Jewish communities.
Because of its critical reporting on Iran's Islamic theocracy, Iran International has frequently been targeted with violent threats. Zeraati, a highly visible public figure for the satellite network, was reportedly featured on an aggressive public billboard in Tehran declaring him “Wanted: Dead or Alive."
The persistent danger from state-sponsored intimidation previously forced the news station to temporarily shift its broadcast center to Washington, D.C., in 2023, citing an intensification of “state-backed threats from Iran." The network subsequently established a new base of operations back in London.
According to police investigative files, the suspects immediately departed the United Kingdom via Heathrow Airport after the attack.
Following international coordination, they were apprehended in Romania in December 2024 and subsequently extradited to Great Britain to face trial. A third suspect remains the subject of ongoing judicial proceedings in Romania.
The incident fits into a wider web of clandestine aggression. In October, Ken McCallum, the director general of Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5, revealed that security teams had thwarted more than 20 “potentially lethal Iran-backed plots" over the preceding year alone.
Furthermore, a separate, self-proclaimed Iranian proxy group recently claimed responsibility for a string of suspected antisemitic hate crimes in Western Europe, including multiple stabbings and attempted firebombings targeting local synagogues.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)