British spies smuggled an Iranian nuclear scientist to the UK across the English Channel on a dinghy after using the migrant crisis as cover, it has been claimed.

The 47-year-old man is thought to have hidden among other Iranians on an inflatable boat when making the crossing.

The scientist travelled by 3,000 miles by land to the French coast near Calais after he was reportedly smuggled out of his homeland and into neighbouring Turkey by the Israeli secret service Mossad.

The nuclear scientist was originally smuggled out of Iran by Mossad before making the lengthy trip across Europe and into the UK

The Iranian scientist, who has information about Iran's nuclear programme and reportedly helped plan the 2012 assassination of Tehran's top nuclear expert Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, arrived in Lydd, Kent, with 12 other migrants on New Year's Eve.

But MI6 faced a problem. They wanted to interview the scientist, and help him make his way on to America, but, unlike the US, Britain is still part of the nuclear Iran Deal.

Not wanting to jeopardize the deal by being seen to help a defector, MI6 decided on the unusual method of 'extraction' in a joint operation with Mossad and America's CIA.

'Once in France, the question of how to get him into Britain remained. We couldn't simply fly him in. Though unusual, it was determined infiltrating him into a group of fellow migrants preparing to cross the Channel by boat offered one solution.'

The plot, which was hatched in October, was complicated by President Donald Trump ending US support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is aimed at preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons via an inspection regime and suspension of sanctions.

A source told the Sunday Express: 'This wasn't without its challenges.

'His absence was noted quickly and we were informed that a special unit of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been dispatched.

A dinghy was recovered in Lydd, Kent, on New Year's Eve, with a number of suspected migrants on board

'Once in France the question of how to get him into Britain remained.

'We couldn't simply fly him in.

'Though unusual, it was determined infiltrating him into a group of fellow migrants preparing to cross the Channel by boat offered one solution.'

MI6 interviewed the nuclear technician on Iran's nuclear plans before he was flown to America.

For decades Western nations have been concerned about Iran's nuclear programme, accusing Tehran of seeking atomic weapons.

Iran long has said its program is for peaceful purposes, but it faced years of crippling sanctions.

The 2015 nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers, including the U.S. under President Barack Obama, was aimed at relieving those fears.

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to tear up the nuclear deal, said he ultimately pulled America out of the accord over Iran's ballistic missile programme and its malign influence on the wider Middle East.