Britain is under attack – and refusing to defend itself

The failure to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group will have consequences

It is all very well for Britain to take the lead in calling for G7 countries to tighten the sanctions regime against Iran in retaliation for its drone and missile assault on Israel at the weekend. But the Government’s pleas for more robust action would carry far greater weight if it was prepared to address Iran’s malevolent activities closer to home.

Britain already has a number of sanctions in place against Tehran, the majority of them imposed to limit Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Further measures were applied in January against senior members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) after the security services uncovered a plot to kill two dissident Iranian journalists on British soil.

Now, in the wake of Iran’s failed attempt to attack Israel with a barrage of lethal drones and missiles, Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron is leading calls for the G7 to adopt new “coordinated sanctions”.

Speaking ahead of the summit of G7 foreign ministers in Italy, Cameron argued that Tehran must be “given a clear and unequivocal message” over its continuing support for terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. “There’s more that we can do to show a united front,” he insisted.

And yet, when it comes to doing more to restrict the ability of the IRGC and its supporters to operate in the UK, the Government appears strangely reluctant to act.

One of the more obvious actions it could take, for example, would be to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, just as it has done with both Hamas and Hezbollah. Moreover, apart from operating a sophisticated network of terror groups throughout the Middle East, the intelligence and security services now have clear evidence that the IRGC and its allies have been conducting illegal operations on British soil, primarily aimed at silencing Iranian dissidents and critics.

Last year, security officials revealed that they had foiled 15 plots by Iran to either kidnap or kill British or Uk-based individuals who were deemed to be “enemies of the regime”. More recently a prominent presenter working for an opposition Iranian television channel was stabbed outside his London home, presumably in an attempt to silence him.

If Britain was really serious about sending Iran an “unequivocal message”, then the evidence it has acquired of the IRGC’S involvement in conducting nefarious activities on British soil should, at the very least, persuade the Government to designate the group as a terrorist organisation.

This is, after all, the action taken by the US back in 2019 after the Trump administration finally became exasperated by the organisation’s involvement in committing acts of terrorism across the Middle East.

Despite the tangible threat that the IRGC poses to our national security, the Government remains opposed to denouncing the group’s terrorist operations, even though there are powerful voices at the Home Office, such as Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, who contend that such action is necessary. Rishi Sunak, however, is thought to be against proscribing the IRGC on the grounds that it could ultimately lead to the cessation of diplomatic relations with Tehran at a critical time.

In spite of Iran’s overt hostility towards the UK, Britain still manages to maintain an ambassadorial-level diplomatic presence at its historic embassy compound in the Iranian capital, one that Foreign Office mandarins insist is essential to keeping communication channels open to the ayatollahs. Washington, which cut diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1980 after the IRGC stormed the US Embassy and held US citizens hostage for 444 days, is also said to support Britain’s continued diplomatic presence in Iran.

There comes a point, though, when the blatantly hostile activities of a state-backed body like the IRGC outweigh diplomatic concerns, especially when the organisation’s direct involvement in the attack on Israel is taken into consideration.

The IRGC is far more than a militant group dedicated to keeping the ayatollahs in power by brutally suppressing the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. It dominates Iran’s entire political, military and economic infrastructure, so much so that IRGC officials are said to directly control at least 50 per cent of the Iranian economy, including lucrative oil smuggling operations.

By continuing to maintain relations with the Iranian regime, the UK is, de facto, bestowing a degree of legitimacy on the IRGC that will only encourage it to continue with its terrorist activities, safe in the knowledge that countries like Britain are reluctant to hold it to account.

Failure, moreover, to designate the IRGC as terrorists also serves to encourage other pro-iranian activists operating in the UK that they, too, can act with impunity, such as using UK banks, as was recently revealed, to covertly move money around the world as part of a vast sanctions-evasion scheme devised by the IRGC.

If Britain, as the Government contends, is really serious about toughening sanctions against Iran, then designating the IRGC a terrorist organisation would certainly be a good place to start.