David McCloskey

But what do you see as the strategic motivation for it?

It seems really challenging to counter because it's

Obviously, it doesn't involve an Iranian handler somehow getting himself or herself into the UK to physically meet with people.

As your interaction with the recruiters suggests, the quantity has a quality all its own here in that they can shoot this out sort of scattershot and see what sticks.

It seems cheap.

My sense from your reporting is that...

They're not paying great money for this.

So, you know, you're probably finding people who are in some measure of financial straits who are keen to do it for not much money.

What are you hearing from security experts on like how you would actually stop this?

How do you counter it?

Well, I guess also if you look at the way that the Iranians have done this in Israel up to this point, there is this kind of...

escalation ladder, not in each individual case, but kind of more broadly where it seems as they do find people who are willing to do more and more kind of extreme things, you end up with more firebombings.

I think in a couple of cases in Israel, the Iranians actually tried to get people to start forest fires, to do kind of mass vandalism

I'm curious, Giovanna, about something that's fascinated me in looking at this conflict, because the Israelis and their ability to penetrate Iran are so unbelievably effective.

And then when you look at the stuff we've been talking about, the Iranian response in many ways is very crude.

And I'm curious if you could – this is zooming out a bit, but why is the intelligence conflict between these two countries so lopsided?

Because it does – it just – it feels the level of sophistication, the scale, the scope, the level of success, like the Israelis are –

way ahead.

And it doesn't mean that the stuff you're reporting on obviously has a cost and it's tremendously scary, but the Iranians are behind.

I'm just curious why you think structurally that's been the case.