The UK has listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, in a major escalation of diplomatic tensions with Tehran, as it also outlawed a proxy group behind a series of arson attacks on Jewish sites in Britain.The Home Office announced the ban on support for the IRGC, a central branch of the Iranian military, on Monday after years of political division over the issue. The move is equivalent to proscription, though not legally identical.“The home secretary has concluded that there is sufficient basis to reasonably believe that each of these bodies is engaged in foreign power threat activity,” the Home Office said in a statement.The government also outlawed the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right (IMCR), which has been blamed for a series of attacks on Jewish targets in the UK. Security Minister Angela Eagle said the IMCR had claimed seven attacks in the UK, including fires at synagogues and Jewish charity ambulances in London, as well as a Persian-language media organisation critical of Iran’s government.“Sitting behind IMCR were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, who almost certainly directed IMCR attacks across Europe,” Eagle said.The group sprang up online earlier this year and has also claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.The government said it was proscribing the IRGC after a number of threats on UK soil, including a plot to assassinate two Iran International television journalists, as well as cyber-attacks on British targets. The move overturns the previous Conservative government’s decision not to ban the organisation and will make it a criminal offence to support it in any way.
Attacks on the rise in Europe
Law enforcement officials say Iran-backed proxy groups are behind a growing number of attacks in Europe, most targeting the Jewish community and Persian-language media critical of Iran’s government. They typically work by recruiting members of criminal groups to carry out sabotage.The arson attacks included a fire in March that destroyed four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green, north London, causing several explosions from gas canisters onboard. Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said at the time that police were investigating whether an Islamist group with possible links to Iran was behind the attack.“The rapid growth in recent years of Iranian state threats is grave: hostile state surveillance activity, 20 disrupted plots, and recent attempted attacks on the Iranian diaspora,” Rowley said.Earlier this month, two Romanian men were given prison sentences over the stabbing of a journalist from a Persian-language television station, an attack the judge said was carried out on behalf of the Iranian state.The European Union in January listed the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation over Tehran’s crackdown on protests. There was no immediate comment from Iran.
