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Iran announces plans to bring in maritime fees for strait of Hormuz

Iran has announced plans to introduce a system of maritime fees in the strait of Hormuz in two months, after the 60-day period of negotiation that has been triggered by the signing of the memorandum of understanding. Tehran, claiming a historic victory over the US, said the strait was under its control and a European plan for a naval mission to escort ships though the strait would not be welcome. The warning came as the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had said Israel “will maintain the security zone in south Lebanon as long as our security needs require it”, referring to the more than 600 sq km of Lebanese territory occupied by Israeli troops along the border. On Iran, Netanyahu stated that Israel would continue to “adhere to the supreme objective” of not allowing Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran insists the deal referring to territorial integrity of Lebanon requires a full Israeli withdrawal, making Donald Trump accountable for Israel’s withdrawal. Trump said on ⁠Thursday afternoon ⁠that the US expected “a ⁠complete ceasefire on all fronts, including ⁠Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel”. “We ‌encourage everyone ‌in the ‌Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations ‌to beautifully unfold,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Israeli drone attacks and artillery shelling continued on Thursday morning. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against Israeli forces in the Kfar Tebnit-Ali al-Taher area in recent days. The threats to the agreement came as a planned formal ceremony marking the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran on Friday was cancelled. Trump and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, have already personally signed the document, translated into English and Farsi. The cancellation of the formal ceremony means the chief mediator, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, will now not travel to Switzerland, a blow to Pakistan that would have welcomed a moment in the global limelight. The US vice-president, JD Vance, said he still intended to travel to Switzerland but admitted he did not know what would happen. Iran said technical-level talks between the two sides would go ahead at the luxurious Qatari-owned Bürgenstock mountain resort by Lake Lucerne. The talks, which are the first direct meeting between the two sides since they met in Islamabad on 12 April, will be focused on how to implement the 14-clause memorandum, including how to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and ensure that commercial traffic starts to flow freely through the strait of Hormuz. At a White House briefing, Vance said the order had already been sent out lifting the blockade on Iranian ports, and more than a dozen ships had travelled through to Iran. US troops would be drawn down to prewar levels within 30 days, he said, adding that copies of the memorandum formally released by the Trump administration had been sent to Congress. In a blow to those hoping the strait of Hormuz would be restored to full and permanent freedom of navigation, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, said the strait needed to be managed, which would come at a cost. But the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, challenged the Iranian plan. He said: “The management of the strait was working fine before the conflict. There were no issues. Ships were navigating freely. There was no safety issue. There was no environmental issue. “So why should we now, as a result of a conflict, accept some novel arrangement that is going to be imposed on it? That, to me, doesn’t make sense. So I think we need to go back to the way it was, and that worked fine, and that should be the end of it.” Muath Alwari, the UAE’s director of policy planning, said the UAE was arguably the recipient of the most Iranian strikes during the war, which targeted hotels, tourist sites and civilian infrastructure. He added that the UAE’s relationship with Israel got stronger during the war, as it found Israel to be a solid defence partner. The country’s engagement with Israel would only deepen after the war, Alwari said. “It does not change our calculus that motivated us in the very beginning to pursue the Abraham accords.” The accords normalised relations between the UAE and Israel. The two statements from key Gulf figures came as the Iranian foreign ministry started the long process of repairing relations with its Gulf allies. It hopes that the Gulf will contribute substantially to a planned $350bn Iran construction fund, which the US has agreed to establish and is supposed to attract largely private-sector investors in the region. Seyed Ali Madanizadeh, Iran’s economic minister, said the US waiver on Iran’s oil exports would not produce an economic bonanza, with experts saying in the short term it could lead to only a small increase in output. He said the war had led to a significant decrease in revenues, a drastic drop in oil income, which had intensified the budget imbalance, adding: “It’s not like everything will just return to normal.”

Iranian star Parastoo Ahmadi reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without hijab

The Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi and eight members of a production team, including musicians, have been reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for performing in a concert livestreamed on Ahmadi’s YouTube channel in 2024. According to court documents, the criminal court of Qom province sentenced the artists to flogging, a two-year ban on leaving the country and a two-year ban on engaging in artistic activities on charges that include offending public decency through the production and publication of “vulgar and immoral content” online. Although the official judiciary news agency has yet to publish the ruling, rights groups and lawyers who reviewed the documents said the pattern of arrests and legal cases against artists publicly defying the regime reflects a broader effort to deter cultural dissent. In December 2024, the 29-year-old singer performed the patriotic song Az Khoone Javanane Vatan (From the Blood of the Youth of the Homeland) without a hijab in a livestreamed performance that went viral. She was briefly detained along with several musicians shortly after its release before being freed. Authorities later filed a formal case over the publication of the video, which has since accumulated millions of views on YouTube. Bahar Ghandehari, the director of advocacy at the US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, said “Ahmadi’s punishment of 74 lashes for merely singing and appearing without a hijab is yet another reminder that human rights conditions in Iran have not changed, despite the Iranian authorities’ wartime propaganda campaign aimed at improving their image.” She added that the contrast between official imagery and the prosecution of artists exposed “the gap between the regime’s propaganda and reality”. Moein Khazaeli, a human rights lawyer at Dadban, a legal counselling centre for Iranian activists, said the sentence lacked legal basis. “Singing, performing music and producing or disseminating musical works by women are not criminalised under Iranian criminal law. Consequently, such activities cannot reasonably be construed as the ‘production, distribution or publication of obscene content’,” he said. “The imposition of a flogging sentence against artists, civil society activists or other citizens is not merely a matter of domestic criminal law. It also raises serious concerns regarding states’ international obligations to prohibit torture and safeguard human dignity. “For this reason, numerous human rights organisations consider flogging not a legitimate form of punishment, but rather a form of torture and inhuman treatment.” For Iranian artists, the ruling, though not unexpected, has deepened fears of escalating cultural repression. The Iranian-British actor Nazanin Boniadi said: “The sentencing of singer Parastoo Ahmadi to flogging for the simple act of singing publicly without a hijab is a stark reminder that, despite talk in Washington of a ‘new regime’ in Iran, the Islamic republic’s machinery of repression remains unchanged. “Accommodating a regime that flogs women for their voices and kills citizens for demanding their rights only emboldens it to continue down its tyrannical path.” The Iranian actor Setareh Maleki, who was forced into exile after starring in Mohammad Rasoulof’s Oscar-nominated film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, said the performance had a powerful emotive impact on her. She told the Guardian: “When I watched the video of Parastoo Ahmadi’s concert, it reignited the spirit of resistance in me. For days, I kept watching the videos over and over again, and I felt immensely proud of Parastoo. “Knowing all the consequences she would have to face, she still refused to give up her right, as a woman, to live, to sing and to be heard. Iranian women never stop fighting against tyranny, not even for a moment, and that is truly remarkable.” She added: “For an Iranian artist who refuses to comply with censorship inside Iran, the daily routine is a form of resistance. “We’ve come a long way but there is still a long road ahead. I’m grateful that every day another beloved artist reminds us of hope again and becomes a guiding light.”

Middle East crisis: Trump says US expects ‘complete ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel’ – as it happened

Three people have been killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese state media, and Hezbollah said its fighters were engaged in fresh clashes with the Israeli military today. The strikes occurred despite the signing of the US-Iran agreement which provides for the end of the war on all fronts in the Middle East, including Lebanon. Donald Trump said on ⁠Thursday ⁠that the US expects “a ⁠complete ceasefire on all fronts, including ⁠Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel,” adding in a Truth Social post, “We ‌encourage everyone ‌in the ‌Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations ‌to beautifully unfold.” JD Vance said that the 60-day period in which to reach a final agreement with Iran has started today. If this is true, that would set a deadline for the final agreement between Iran and the US as 17 August. US central command (Centcom) has ended its blockade in the strait of Hormuz, it announced on social media. The US blockade of the strait had been in effect since 13 April, with control of the waterway being a key point of conflict in the war. Marine Traffic data showed that at least seven ships have crossed the strait so far today. The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said at a meeting with Nato defense ministers in Brussels that the US will restart military action and ⁠reimpose a ⁠blockade against Iran if it does not fulfill its commitments ⁠under the agreement signed yesterday. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said that the signing ceremony in Switzerland, which was due to take place on Friday, is cancelled as it is understood that the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran has already been signed remotely. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she was representing the bloc’s position on the Middle East, after Israel announced it was severing diplomatic relations over allegations she had compared the country to apartheid South Africa.

‘Cynical to get power’: Michel Barnier on Boris Johnson, Brexit and the EU’s future

A couple of years ago, Michel Barnier spent a weekend with Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley. It was not some ghoulish Brexit spin-off of The Traitors, but the result of the former EU negotiator’s wife, Isabelle, being a close friend of Johnson’s French cousin, Anne du Boucheron, the owner of Château de la Baronnière, a 19th-century estate in Mauges-sur-Loire, in western France. “We spent a weekend together in a French castle. Very friendly. Long promenades in the forest,” Barnier recalls of Johnson senior, with whom he discussed the former prime minister’s motivation to back Brexit. “It was interesting. Boris was much more European at the beginning. Even if he was critical. I don’t see it as a motivation but it is, perhaps, a method or attitude: to be pragmatic in some way. Cynical. Cynical to get power.” Emphasising his points with a gentle thump of the table in a splendid meeting room in the National Assembly, where he now represents a Paris constituency, Barnier follows up his anecdote with fresh evidence of his fondness for a bon mot. To “the clock is ticking”, “no spirit of revenge”, “no cherrypicking”, add: “Never sacrifice the future to the present.” A decade ago, Barnier was asked by the then European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, to lead the EU’s negotiating team after the Brexit referendum. He navigated four years of fraught talks, a list of negotiating counterparts lengthy enough to grace a pub quiz question – David Davis, Dominic Raab, Steve Barclay, David Frost, for the uninitiated – and a stream of meetings in his offices on the fifth floor of the EU’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels with the various political agitators of the time. There was Tony Blair (“I never thought that there would be a second referendum,” Barnier insists) and Nigel Farage (“This guy with the help of Mr [Steve] Bannon, the help of the Russians wants to destroy the EU – never, no way”). He also hosted that “more radical group” in the Conservative party, he recalls, grasping for the name of the guerrilla Brexiters who made such trouble for Theresa May. “The ERG [European Research Group], yes,” he says after a little help. “Great times,” says Barnier with a wistful smile. Each to their own, perhaps. Few would now argue that great times followed Britain’s exit of the EU – something Barnier is happy to make a point of. “The great lie was to say that everything was due to Brussels,” he says, noting the UK’s weak economic growth and increasingly toxic immigration debate. “Mr Farage is still winning some elections but he has no longer the capacity to say the fault is in Brussels.” Other scapegoats are available? “But not Brussels,” he responds with a little flash of steel. “It would not be fair to say that the problems of the UK today are due to Brexit, but what I am sure of is that all these problems are more difficult because of Brexit.” It is not that Barnier is blind to the EU’s historical “mistakes”, he says. Too many directives and bureaucracy, he concedes, and not enough done to secure the bloc’s external borders. He is an admirer of the EU’s new policy of seven-day screenings for those arriving through irregular routes and expedited deportations, a package of policies that have had some making comparisons to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. All this should have been done earlier, he says, but Britain was as complicit in this failure as the other 27 member states. “I still don’t understand why the UK, which always had a very strong influence, left rather than use its influence to correct the EU – it is for me incomprehensible.” Barnier is also reluctant to accept that the EU made any particular missteps in the run-up to the referendum in 2016. It was Britain’s decision not to impose transitional controls on migration from eastern Europe when Poland (2004), Bulgaria and Romania (2007) joined the EU. The then German chancellor Angela Merkel’s later rejection of David Cameron’s “emergency brake” was soundly based on concerns about the “unravelling of the unity and coherence of the EU and legitimacy of the single market”, he says. The single market was the top priority for Barnier too during the Brexit talks as the UK sought to keep frictionless trade while ending the free movement of people. At the time, Barnier explained it in a rather technical way; that the four freedoms (of goods, capital, services and labour) were indivisible. Today, he is more political. Barnier, not yet a presidential candidate for when Emmanuel Macron stands down, but doing a lot of campaigning and “hoping to be useful”, is speaking in the knowledge of a very real possibility that a far-right president could be elected next spring – whether Marine Le Pen or, should a legal ruling on her candidacy not go her way, Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old president of her National Rally party. “We can never give any kind of argument for Mrs Le Pen or Mr Bardella or Mr [Matteo] Salvini [in Italy] to ask for the same treatment: ‘Look at the UK, they have no consequence, they pay nothing, they are cherrypicking.’ Never, never. At that moment it is the end of the EU – and Mr Farage wins … If they destroy the EU, then every European country is lost.” No flexibility even now on trade for Keir Starmer? “No,” he says. Brussels cannot “give any argument to the far right in France or elsewhere”. Barnier was France’s prime minister for three months in 2024 before the National Rally and the leftwing New Popular Front voted to bring down his government. “I am now much more comprehending [of] Theresa May,” he says of the former prime minister’s parliamentary woes. He is working to create a new body, a European Council for Defence and Security, that would include UK, Ukraine and Norway and the EU members. The governments could cooperate and jointly borrow to fund military projects as well as initiatives relating to artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies. A similar sort of defence cooperation had been agreed in a political declaration relating to Britain’s future relationship with the EU in 2019 which was ripped up by Johnson a few months later, Barnier says. “I remember a dinner with Johnson and [the European Commission president] Ursula von der Leyen, and he tries a threat. He says: ‘OK, we are not going to find an agreement on trade and economy, it is a pity – but we can work together on external defence.’” Barnier recalls he spoke up to remind Johnson that he had already ruled out such cooperation. “With a kind of natural cynicism he looks around at his team: ‘Who decided this?’ I don’t know if Mrs von der Leyen was an altar girl but I am not an altar boy – I used to be a long time ago. He decided this.” Did he ever believe Johnson’s threat to leave without a deal? “Frankly speaking, no. And I was never impressed by …” Barnier turns to ask his aide to remind him of the name of Johnson’s negotiator, David Frost. He had forgotten Frost’s name? Barnier raises a gallic eyebrow, purses his lips and says nothing. It has been claimed that should Britain rejoin the EU it would not be able to enjoy its previous special status, with opt-outs from the euro and the passport-free Schengen travel zone. Barnier disagrees. “It is perfectly possible,” he says. He is less definitive on the issue of Margaret Thatcher’s permanent budget rebate which reduced the UK’s financial contributions. “The DNA of the EU is solidarity,” he says. Will the UK rejoin the EU in his lifetime? “I don’t know the length of my life,” says the 75-year-old. “I think day after day the British people will see in the current world that it is more dangerous, more fragile, more unstable, that we cannot be alone. It is true for France, it is true for Germany, it is true for everyone. Every day it will be more clear.”

Iran peace deal makes clear how far US has been forced to retreat since 2025

Only a man with an unparalleled ignorance of history such as Donald Trump would have signed America’s peace treaty with Iran at Versailles, the byword for national humiliation. And only a man with an impish sense of humour such as Emmanuel Macron would have suggested it. It is easy to cast Trump in the role of the humiliated and hurt German count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau. The treaty of Versailles, after all, was based on 14 points, just as the memorandum of understanding has 14 clauses. But the memorandum is not a full-scale surrender document; it is an admission that America could not achieve what it sought through war. If the memorandum, taken with Trump’s remarks at his hour-long press conference at the G7, is compared with a document the Americans tabled in 2025, it is possible to see how far the US has been forced to retreat. Red line after red line has been erased. The US tabled the 2025 document immediately before Israel, with US support, began the 12-day war culminating in the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. Under its terms, Iran was to have no domestic enrichment capabilities beyond the limited enrichment for medical and agricultural needs; all nuclear supply would be imported from outside Iran; all enriched uranium stockpiles would be shipped out of Iran immediately upon signing the agreement; all enriched stockpile material would be downblended to 3.67%; Iran would not build any new enrichment facilities; and Iran would dismantle all programmes capable of uranium conversion. Instead, a consortium including Iran, the US and the Gulf states was to undertake enrichment outside Iran. At Évian for the G7 meeting, however, Trump conceded Iran had a right to continue enrich uranium, saying it could not be excluded because other countries in the region had nuclear programmes. He said there was no great rush to dismantle or dilute the stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and US officials acknowledged that this stockpile could be diluted under IAEA watch inside Iran, so long as it was diluted to 3.67%. In practice, for the immediate waiver on oil exports to work, waivers will need to be issued on associated services including banking transactions, insurance and transportation. Miad Maleki, a former US Treasury official and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies thinktank, said broadening authorisation to financial transactions would crack the core architecture of US oil and financial sanctions against Iran, arguably the most powerful economic leverage the US holds over the regime outside the naval blockade. Wider sanctions relief, which will not be offered until the nuclear negotiations are completed to mutual satisfaction, would cover primary and secondary sanctions as well as UN sanctions. If this happened, it would represent the biggest recasting of US-Iran relations since the Iranian revolution in 1979. What is worse from the US perspective is that all these concessions have been made to try to secure the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war, but even that may not be achieved. The memorandum text shows that free navigation of the strait could end after 60 days, at which point Iran will conduct dialogue with Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the strait in discussion with other Gulf states. Finally, there is a proposed $350bn Iran reconstruction fund that the US has said it will create but will not contribute to. For that amount of money – the equivalent of the financial losses Iran has suffered – to be raised, the Gulf states would have to be deeply forgiving to a country that has just bombed their hotels and airbases and frozen their economies. Nothing, even the unfreezing of the $24bn Iranian assets abroad, is likely to do much to ease Iran’s acute economies woes. As to whether the deal is better or worse than Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, many of those involved in the talks say it is like comparing apples and oranges. The context is different, partly because Iran’s nuclear sites have been so damaged. More importantly, the 2015 deal was a fully fledged arms control document. The memorandum is at best a document that sets the stage for another negotiation that could end up in a stalemate or an agreement closely resembling the 2015 deal. Apart from the Iranian reiteration that it does not seek a nuclear weapon, the scope of the nuclear talks is left entirely open. The memorandum’s language is not even as strong as the 2015 agreement where Iran reaffirmed that “under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons”. A denial of intent is irrelevant. It is the method of verification that matters, and on that the US is no further than before. So why has he struck the deal? Trump was very frank on Wednesday: the riskof a worldwide recession and oil reserves running out in a matter of weeks. He said: “The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover,” referring to the president blamed for the Great Depression that wiped out savings and pitched millions into poverty. “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”

‘If Ukraine burns, your Moscow will burn,’ Zelenskyy warns after overnight strikes in Russia – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! We will catch up with the overnight developments at the EU summit first thing tomorrow. Here is your summary of the day: Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that “if Ukraine burns, your Moscow will burn” (12:44) as he ramped up his rhetoric after overnight drone strikes on the Russian capital (9:55, 11:41, 15:00). Zelenskyy is attending the European Council’s meeting in Brussels tonight, discussing the next steps in the EU’s support for Ukraine and its prospective membership of the bloc (16:46, 16:54, 17:14). Earlier today, The US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth warned that “Nato has been a paper tiger and a one-way street” (9:55), as he delivered another blistering criticism of the European allies, blaming them for becoming “a dependency of the United States” (9:55) and “free riding” (9:55). Hegseth said that the refusal of some Nato allies to support the US forces in Iran strikes was “shameful” (10:00), as he announced plans for a review of US posture in Europe (10:05). Poland and Lithuania are among countries that hope to attract permanent US military presence on its territory as part of the review (15:39, 16:46). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Border Force officer and Hong Kong trade official jailed for spying for China

A UK Border Force officer and a Hong Kong trade official based in London have been jailed for spying for China in the first such conviction in British criminal history. Peter Wai, who conducted “shadow policing” operations on Chinese dissidents in the UK, was sentenced to 10 years, while his handler, Bill Yuen, received an eight-year term. After a two-month trial at the Old Bailey, the pair were convicted under the National Security Act of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Wai, 41, a Border Force officer at Heathrow airport who previously served in the Metropolitan police and as a special constable in the City of London police, was also convicted of misconduct in a public office over his use of a Home Office computer system to acquire details about his targets. The jury heard that Yuen, 66, a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, had taken over the handling of Wai shortly after they met in 2021 to conduct surveillance on dissidents. In a televised sentencing, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said the defendants’ actions were “deliberate, concerted and serious”. They had caused “real and significant” harm, leaving those targeted in fear and distress, the judge said. She described Wai’s attitude towards his misconduct as “arrogant”, saying he had a “sense of entitlement” to do as he pleased. The case is one of the first to be prosecuted under the National Security Act. In her sentencing remarks, Cheema-Grubb said: “The offence of which you have been convicted is a grave one. Parliament has enacted the National Security Act in response to the growing reality that the UK now faces persistent, active and often clandestine interference by foreign state actors. “Modern foreign intelligence activity is not confined to orthodox espionage and may take the form of surveillance and information gathering about dissidents. Conduct of this kind threatens not only the individual victims but the sovereignty of the state and public confidence in institutions and the safety that this jurisdiction must afford to those lawfully present here.” She said that she had “no doubt” that the two men’s criminal activities contributed to the “fear, insecurity and distress for those targeted”. The Chinese embassy has said the case was an abuse of law designed to embolden anti-China elements “bent on destabilising Hong Kong”. The judge told the court she was unable to take into account evidence heard of the men’s spying before the law came into force in December 2023. The targets of what the judge described as a “shadow policing” operation included Nathan Law, an exiled politician who was the subject of several spying operations, and a second young activist in the UK whose family was being persecuted in mainland China. Wai also infiltrated Hong Kong pro-democracy groups and was instructed to gather information on politicians, including the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and the peer Helena Kennedy. Yuen, Wai and a third British national, Matthew Trickett, were arrested with seven others in May 2024 after a failed break-in of a flat in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, that belonged to Monica Kwong, a personal assistant who had fled Hong Kong in 2023 after being accused of defrauding her employer out of £16m. The seven others arrested, who had recently arrived in the UK, fled the country after being released. The police did not have the interpretation resources to analyse the 200 devices that were seized during the arrest in order to charge them. Yuen and Wai were charged alongside Trickett, 37, an immigration enforcement officer and former Royal Marine. Trickett was found dead “by his own hand”, the judge said, in a park in Maidenhead, Berkshire, shortly after he was bailed. Helen Flanagan, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, which led the investigation, said: “Wai and Yuen were targeting pro-democracy campaigners here in the UK and sending highly sensitive details about them and their families to the Hong Kong authorities. “Our investigation, along with the convictions and sentences show how seriously this kind of activity is taken in the UK and that it will not be tolerated. It should also serve as a warning to anyone else who might consider doing similar that it is simply not worth it and that when you are caught, you will likely face a lengthy prison sentence.” Flanagan added that she hoped the sentencing “reassures those living in the UK who may be concerned about being targeted by any foreign state, that we will take action to stop this from happening and that we will do everything we can to help keep them safe”. Wai, who described Chinese dissidents as “cockroaches”, worked as a frontline uniformed officer with the Met based in Hounslow between February 2015 and April 2019 when he resigned. At the time, he was under investigation for misconduct after he told a supervisor that he had used his deceased grandfather’s address on a loan application to avoid tax. He had also accessed police records as a favour for friends, but police said there was no evidence he had used its database for spying. Despite the misconduct investigation being held on his files, Wai was later allowed to join the City of London police as a volunteer constable. Wai, who has also served in the Royal Navy, was sentenced to six years for assisting a foreign intelligence service and four additional years for misconduct in public office. A City of London police spokesperson said: “After Wai was arrested, we carried out an extensive review of his time as a special constable, despite assurances this position was not used in his offending. “Our checks concluded no live misconduct on Wai’s file when vetting was granted. “Despite his sentence today, Wai is still subject to an accelerated misconduct hearing related to his role as a special constable. “Our vetting procedures have improved since 2019 and we regularly review our processes in line with national guidance to ensure they are as robust as possible.”