Unelected bureaucrats are once again playing politics with British national security: this time in relation to the threat emanating from Iran’s regime.
The message needs to be clear to Prime Minister Keir Starmer: intervene now and take back control from Whitehall or on your head be it if and when the Ayatollah successfully carries out a terrorist attack on British soil. And any intervention must begin with the proscription of the regime’s terror arm – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Forgive me for my frank tone, but the arrests of seven Iranian nationals allegedly plotting an attack by counter-terrorism police over the weekend shows how pressing this threat is.
Dare I say it – and I truly hope I am wrong – but the Iranian regime’s successive attempts to plot terror on British soil in the past few years bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the period that preceded 9/11 in the United States. In other words, we are just one intelligence failure away from a major Iranian regime terrorist attack in the UK. MI5 itself has declared that it has foiled more than 20 Iranian regime-linked terror plots on British soil since 2022.
Of course, the security services – not least Counter Terrorism Command – do an incredible job at keeping Brits safe, not least those from the British-Jewish and British-Iranian communities – the two primary targets of IRGC terrorism in the UK. However, they are not omniscient. And, as the past has shown, attacks have slipped through the net. This includes IRGC terror and assassinations in places far closer to home than one might think. In fact, this time last year, Pouria Zeraati, a British-Iranian journalist – and my best friend – was stabbed four-times outside of his home in Wimbledon in an IRGC-proxy attack. Yet, instead of taking robust action after this attack, then-foreign minister David Cameron shockingly declared it was “not in Britain’s interests” to proscribe the IRGC.
Of course, ministers – who have been fed lines by Whitehall bureaucrats – would have you believe that the current sanctions regime on the IRGC is sufficient, and that proscription would merely be “symbolic” with no practical effect.
Let’s me be clear: this is absolute nonsense and could not be further from the truth.
Proscription would have meaningful consequence on the IRGC ability to operate on British soil – and would fill in the sanctions loophole the Ayatollah’s regime is currently exploiting.
This is because, as well as conducting terrorist plots via its direct operatives and proxies – such as hiring local gangs – the IRGC is also nurturing homegrown Islamist radicalisation and terror in the UK. It is doing so using the using the same methods as ISIS and al-Qaeda, whereby a network of mosques, charities and centres are proactively conducting IRGC-affiliated radicalisation activities that are clearly extremist and violent.
Last year, I obtained and exposed via the JC evidence that revealed IRGC’s extremist commanders being directly hosted online via a London-based entity with intent to radicalise and recruit British nationals. During these talks, these commanders glorified terrorism, propagated extreme antisemitism and even called on British students to join their apocalyptic army to “bring an end to the lives of Zionists and Jews across the world”.
More recently, I exposed another British charity that had met with IRGC commanders in Iran and signed an agreement pledging to propagate the “ideals” of jihad and martyrdom across its centres in the UK.
However, unlike ISIS and al-Qaeda – which are proscribed terrorist groups – the current sanctions regime on the IRGC does not prohibit its ability to disseminate jihadi propaganda or carry out radicalisation activities on British soil. Proscription would fundamentally change this and would give the government, charity commission and technology companies a clear mandate to prohibit any activity linked to the IRGC – including the ongoing propaganda and radicalisation operations.
It would also provide key tools to take preventative steps against IRGC and Shia radicalisation across our local communities – something they currently lack. The Prevent programme, which is designed to identify and prevent acts of terror from radicalised individuals, is currently almost exclusively focused on Sunni Islamist extremism, meaning IRGC radicalisation is a blind spot. Proscription would again change this. It would equip our local communities – such as the police, teachers and business leaders – with the necessary tools to be able to identify and prevent IRGC and Shia radicalisation.
The IRGC clearly fits the criteria for proscription. It is an armed antisemitic, Islamist extremist organisation that is proactively plotting terrorism against the UK and British nationals. This is no longer a question of evidence or crossing a specific threshold – it is purely a matter of political will. The senior civil servants who have the prime minister’s ear will be telling him proscription risks a diplomatic fallout with Tehran and recommend he opts to appease the Ayatollah instead. But as the arrests over the weekend clearly demonstrated, this approach has failed to deter IRGC terrorism on British soil. It’s time Starmer shows Whitehall who is in charge by putting British national-security first and proscribing the IRGC.
Kasra Aarabi is the director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran and a British-Iranian expert on Iran and Shia Islamist extremism
