Swindon’s shoppers stood stunned as a man was pinned to the ground by balaclava-clad police officers. Residents in Rochdale witnessed heavily armed special forces leading a man from a house following loud blasts. They were scenes straight from a high-octane thriller, but this was the real-life drama on the street of the UK in recent weeks.
Nine men – eight Iranian nationals – have been arrested in a series of dramatic raids across England. Reports suggest an imminent attack against the Israeli Embassy in London had been foiled with mere hours to spare.
That Tehran could be behind a violent terror plot should come as little surprise. Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have operated within the UK for years and have become a major focus of Britain’s security services.
Sir Ken McCallum, head of MI5, took the unusual step last year of publicly revealing that his agency had foiled at least 20 attacks in the UK since 2022 and warned that Iran was plotting at “an unprecedented pace and scale”.
The terrorists of the IRGC use non-Iranian criminal proxies for much of their dirty work, but the fact that the recent arrests were of Iranian nationals would suggest an alarming increase in their brazenness, should these arrests lead to successful prosecutions.
The IRGC has grown emboldened by the abject failure of authorities across the Western world to ban the organisation (US and Canada aside), as well as the increasing desperation of their fundamentalist regime in Tehran, which is reeling in the aftermath of the decimation by Israel of its prized assets, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Projecting violence and instability outside Iran’s borders is the IRGC’s raison d’être and they have worked overtime since Hamas’ October 7 pogrom.
It has led analysts to question the extent to which the IRGC and its agents of hate have been involved in cynically stoking anti-Israel sentiment and outright anti-Jewish racism on British university campuses and high streets.
It is no secret that Iran’s extremist ideology is already disseminated in plain sight through institutions across the UK. The Islamic Centre of England reportedly held an infamous candlelit vigil for Qassem Soleimani – an arch-terrorist with the blood of tens of thousands on his hands.
Other IRGC commanders have been documented telling British audiences that the Holocaust was “a lie and a fake”, that universities have become “the battlefront”, and calling for British students to become “soft-war officers”. The Charity Commission opened investigations, but they need more powers – which can only come from formally criminalising the IRGC.
Cross-party parliamentarians have resumed their long-running demand for the IRGC’s proscription. It is a move that would be welcomed by the UK’s Arab allies in the Middle East, who are looking on in bemusement at the UK’s laissez-faire approach to Islamist extremism.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper both called for proscription while in Opposition, and Labour’s 2024 election manifesto even endorsed the move. And yet, the necessary decision keeps getting kicked into the long grass with the Foreign Office seemingly trying to pacify parliamentary pressure by incrementally expanding existing sanctions frameworks and introducing the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.
Indecision and diversionary tactics are merely delaying the inevitable and have left a vacuum which Iran is more than eager to fill.
So why have Labour failed to make good on their word? Speculation has focused on a long-running disagreement between the Home Office and Foreign Office and alleged concerns about Iran’s diplomatic retaliation to proscription.
This strikes me as a wilful misreading of Iran’s previous actions – the British Embassy in Tehran was already attacked little over a decade ago and since then a number of British Iranian dual nationals have been belligerently taken hostage by Tehran. Weekly, calls are made by regime figures for the destruction of the UK (known as “Little Satan”). If October 7 has taught us anything, it is that the time has come for us to take extremists at their word.
The UK’s world-renowned security services are playing their part admirably in thwarting Iran’s murderous ambitions, but the IRGC only needs to get lucky once. All the while, the IRGC is executing an ideological war in the heart of the UK’s towns and cities.
There is no alternative to proscription. For the security and well-being of the UK’s citizenry and democracy, the Labour government can ill-afford to procrastinate a day longer.
Amjad Taha is a leading UAE political strategist and analyst. He is the author of “The Deception of the Arab Spring” and a regular contributor to CNN, Fox News, Sky News (Australia & Arabia), Newsweek, and major Arab media
