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The UK will ban support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Keir Starmer said on Monday, in a move that officials said came close to proscribing the military group as a terrorist organisation.
The prime minister announced his government would designate the branch of the Iranian military under a new National Security Act, enabling law enforcement to take action against anyone deemed to be providing it with support.
The IRGC’s designation comes after years of wrangling over whether it should be officially proscribed, given its centrality to the Iranian government machinery. It has the potential to further undermine relations between London and Tehran just as the US and Iran resume hostilities.
It was announced alongside similar designations for the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right (IMCR), which has been blamed for attacks on Jewish targets in the UK, and the Russian GRU Volunteer Corps, an international branch of Russian military intelligence.
Starmer said: “We have already taken tough action against the Iranian regime and those linked to it, and against Russian operatives and networks targeting our country. These new powers will make it easier to prosecute and lock up anyone carrying out their dirty work here in Britain.
“Anyone acting on behalf of those who threaten our national security should be in no doubt that there is no place for you in Britain. We will find you, and you will face the full force of the law.”
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said: “Iran and Russia are using proxies and thugs to do their dirty work on our shores. I have rapidly designated three groups so those working for them will be tracked down and put behind bars.”
Ministers have debated proscribing the IRGC for years.
In 2023, the government decided not to list the group as a terrorist organisation, choosing instead to hit it with additional sanctions amid concerns about the diplomatic fallout of a full proscription.
Officials warned at the time that proscribing the IRGC would be likely to lead to the expulsion of the UK ambassador to Tehran, removing an important route of communication to the Iranian government.
But ministers said on Monday they had been prompted to act in part because of recent threats to British targets. They included plots to assassinate two Iran International TV journalists in the UK, as well as cyber-attacks on infrastructure in Britain, Australia and Canada.
Designating the three organisations introduces new criminal offences for people who support, assist or receive a benefit from them. If anyone conducts espionage or sabotage on their behalf, they would face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
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The government said it was designating the IMCR, otherwise known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or HAYI, because of recent attacks on locations linked to Jewish and Israeli organisations in the UK.
The IMCR has claimed responsibility for seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities, including an arson attack on four ambulances in Golders Green, north-west London, on 23 March.
Until now ministers had not officially blamed the IMCR for those attacks, but the security minister, Angela Eagle, said on Monday: “Sitting behind IMCR were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ al-Quds force, who almost certainly directed IMCR attacks across Europe.”
Eagle added that the government had decided to designate the Russian GRU because of the way it had conducted operations in the UK, directly and through a network of proxies.
This included the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the government said, as well as more recent sabotage attacks carried out by volunteer forces originally recruited to fight in Ukraine.
Eagle said: “There is sufficient basis to reasonably believe that each of these bodies is engaged in foreign power threat activity, and that each designation is necessary to protect the safety and interests of the United Kingdom.”
