A government minister has attacked the Iranian regime and the actions of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “a threat to the safety and security of the UK and our allies”.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis was responding to a question by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI)’s parliamentary chair Jon Pearce, who asked what steps the government was taking “to deal with the threat posed by Tehran here on British soil”?
Pearce, an MP for High Peak in Derbyshire, told MPs that following a meeting with the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) he had “heard distressing examples of the Iranian regime organising on our campuses and stirring up hatred against Jewish students”.
Jarvis added in his response: “The government continually assesses potential threats to the UK and takes the protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms and safety incredibly seriously, wherever they originate.”
However, he did not say whether the government had any plans to proscribe the IRGC.
In opposition, Labour had pledged to proscribe the group and in February 2023 then-Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament: “We would proscribe the IRGC, either by using existing terrorism legislation or by creating a new process of proscription for hostile state actors.”
However, last week Politico reported that the government was set to ignore calls to proscribe the IRGC, despite backing the group’s proscription while in opposition.
The government has taken some actions against the Iranian regime following its ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1, sanctioning Iranian military figures and organisations.
These included senior figures in the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, Iran’s Air Force and Farzanegan Propulsion Systems Design Bureau (FPSDB), an organisation linked to Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile development.
Last week, Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick said the IRGC should be banned, comparing it to terror organisations that had been fully proscribed by the Tories during their time in office, Hezbollah and Hamas. Previously the British government had made a distinction between the political and military wings of the organisations.
At the Conservative Party conference in September Jenrick said it was “a mark of shame” that his party hadn’t proscribed the IRGC while in government.
