British man accused of spying on Cyprus RAF base for Iran
A British man, Rashad Sultanov, has been arrested on suspicion of spying on a UK military base in Cyprus for the Iranian military. The 44-year-old is accused of carrying out hostile surveillance on RAF Akrotiri and sharing information with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Sultanov will be charged under the National Security Act, the first time an alleged offence under the 2023 law has been investigated in an overseas territory.
- ▪Rashad Sultanov, a 44-year-old British man, has been accused of spying on RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus on behalf of the Iranian military.
- ▪Sultanov, who also holds Azerbaijani citizenship, was arrested by Cypriot police on 17 July and is in custody pending extradition proceedings.
- ▪The UK has maintained a permanent base at Akrotiri since the 1950s, and recent RAF operations to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones have been launched from there.
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| Original publisher | BBC News — UK |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce853y7yq7yo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss |
| Publication time | Fri, 31 Jul 2026 06:42:16 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-31T06:47:48.432Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-31T06:47:48.432Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | lbhfTZv6n-mG · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
British man accused of spying on Cyprus RAF base for IranImage source, ReutersImage caption, Rashad Sultanov has been accused of carrying out spying on RAF AkrotiriBySean SeddonPublished5 minutes agoA British man has been arrested on suspicion of spying on a UK military base in Cyprus on behalf of the Iranian military.Rashad Sultanov, 44, of Islington, north London, is accused of carrying out "hostile surveillance" on RAF Akrotiri and sharing information with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.Sultanov, who also holds Azerbaijani citizenship, was arrested by Cypriot police on 17 July and is in custody pending extradition proceedings.The Crown Prosecution Service has said he will be charged under the National Security Act - the first time an alleged offence under the 2023 law has been…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at BBC News — UK.
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