Two Iranian men are charged over a Manchester plot and due in court on Saturday

British counter-terror police charged two Iranian men on Friday with preparing acts of terrorism against Jewish targets in Greater Manchester. Rahman Salehi, 35, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, are due in court on Saturday, 3 October. The Crown Prosecution Service said they engaged in conduct, on or before 20 September 2026, with the intention of committing acts of terrorism or of assisting another person to do so.

The men were arrested in Manchester on 20 September. Police said the alleged preparation included communicating with others on encrypted applications, acquiring components and equipment, and using the internet to identify and research potential targets, including images, plans and maps. A New York Times account of the police statement said officers believe the men had been speaking with an overseas party who may be in Iran. The Times listed Salehi as 34. The Manchester Evening News and the charge sheet as reported locally list him as 35, and Ahmadyan as 36. The age gap of one year on Salehi is unresolved in the public copy. The names, the nationality, the arrest date and the court date are not.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the news would be deeply distressing for Jewish communities, coming so soon after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. She called the case a reminder of threats from terrorists and from foreign state actors. She also said both men had arrived in Britain by small boat across the Channel several years ago. It is understood one arrived in 2020 and the other in 2023, that one was granted asylum, and that the other has a live asylum claim. Mahmood used that fact to argue for the government's work on illegal crossings. The charge itself does not depend on the year of arrival. The politics of the case will.

The timing is the other load-bearing fact. The alleged preparation is dated on or before 20 September, which is the eve of Yom Kippur in 2026. Police have not said a specific synagogue, school or communal building was the chosen target. They have said potential targets were researched. That is a narrower claim than a completed plan against a named building, and it is the claim the charge supports. Counter-terror officers searched Lancaster House as part of the inquiry. No explosive was described as having been assembled and planted. The allegation is preparation.

Iran has been the named worry in British security statements for months, aimed at Jewish and Israeli targets on British soil. Friday's charging does not, by itself, prove direction from Tehran. The police formulation is careful: an overseas party who may be in Iran. A state link, if prosecutors have one, will have to be made in court or in a later intelligence statement. Until then the verified overseas element is that phrase, plus the nationality of the two defendants.

The small-boat detail will travel further than the charge wording. Mahmood put it in the statement on purpose. One man has asylum. One has a claim still open. Both are now charged with preparing terrorism. Those three facts will be used by people who want a harder asylum rule and by people who will say a 2020 arrival cannot be blamed on this year's Channel numbers. Neither argument is in the charge. Both will sit next to it when the men appear on Saturday.

What Saturday's hearing is likely to produce is a remand decision, not a verdict. Preparation offences of this kind rarely end at a first appearance. The facts that can still move are whether prosecutors name a location, whether they evidence the overseas contact, and whether the one-year discrepancy in Salehi's age is a reporting error or a documents error. The charging decision is already made. Two Iranian nationals are in the system, accused of preparing an attack on Jewish targets in Greater Manchester before Yom Kippur, and they are due before a court on Saturday.