The United Kingdom announced Monday, July 13th, that it is banning support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), using sweeping new state-threats powers rather than the standard terrorism-proscription process, since the IRGC is a formal arm of Iran’s military.
The move follows a series of antisemitic attacks in Britain, including the torching of four Jewish community ambulances, and is designed to close a legal gap around state-sponsored proxy activity.
According to the UK Government, the move was to stop foreign states from using Britain as a base for intimidation and violence.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is applying the new National Security (State Threats) Act, enacted just last week, to designate the IRGC a threat to national security.
Under a written statement to parliament, any support for the group from expressing a positive opinion of it to materially assisting it will now be a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
A Home Office minister described the IRGC as a central pillar of Iran’s security apparatus that answers directly to the Supreme Leader and operates well beyond conventional military functions, including intelligence work and the use of proxy actors abroad.
British officials said they had identified IRGC-linked activity on UK soil involving threats to life and intimidation, and that the Guard had almost certainly directed a linked group, the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, which has claimed responsibility for seven attacks on Jewish and Israeli-linked sites and Persian-language media in Britain.
The same legislation is also being used against a Russian GRU-linked volunteer wing, and the move comes after sustained parliamentary pressure and a recent EU decision to add the IRGC to its own terrorist list.
Iran has previously denied using proxy groups, and its embassy in London had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing this report.
