Iranian spies offered a people-smuggler $200,000 (around £158,290) to assassinate two news presenters codenamed “the bride and the groom” outside their London studio, to show critics of the regime they “could do harm to them at any time”.

Last autumn, the spies made plans to strike the studios of Persian language news channel Iran International, based in a business park in West London, with a car bomb. But over the course of a month, as their ambitions and anxieties grew, their plans had to change, and instead orders were sent to “simply stab [the presenters] using a kitchen knife.”

Their plot was foiled, however, by the very people-smuggler who they hired to arrange the atrocity.