Britain’s security minister has refused to definitively state whether a branch of Iran’s armed forces will be proscribed after increasing concerns over the regime’s activity in the UK.
Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Tom Tugendhat declined to directly answer questions from several MPs on whether the UK will make the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) illegal.
However, Tugendhat did state that the government is taking dangers posed by the IRGC “seriously,” and said the UK’s response to the “vile” threat from Iran has increased over recent months.
His comments came following reports that one of Iran’s main UK outposts promoted sheikhs calling for the downfall of Western democracies and the “compassionate” killing of gay people.
The centre—registered as a British charity—also promoted speakers who have called for “academic jihad” in schools and the eradication of Western “empires,” and those who have said death was a “compassionate” sentence for gay people, according to the newspaper.
It is run by a direct representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is one of many across the UK with apparent links to the regime, according to the newspaper.
‘Vile Threat’
The centre is being investigated by the Charity Commission over serious concerns about its governance.Some of the controversial activities organised by the centre include a large vigil for the IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani, who was one of Iran’s most senior military commanders before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike.
Referring to the Times of London reports about the Islamic centre, Labour MP Christian Wakeford asked the security minister whether it is now time to proscribe the IRGC.
Tugendhat replied that the work the government has been doing “against the Iranian threat in the United Kingdom has not diminished—in fact, it has increased in recent months.”
He said that the Islamic Centre of England is “not alone” and “the work of the IRGC is not limited to those Iranian proxy organisations.”
Tugendhat added that the government is pulling together the “resources and the attitude” to deploy against the “vile threat” from Iran.
Responding to a similar question from Conservative MP Alicia Kearns about the proscription of the IRGC, the security minister again avoided confirming the government’s intention to do so.
Kearns said, “There are three—if not seven—cut-outs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operating here in the UK, silencing critics of the ayatollah, inciting hate, celebrating terrorists, and recruiting for a terrorist state.
“The government know that this House wants the IRGC proscribed, but in the immediate term, will they please protect us from transnational repression by shutting down these cut-outs of the Iranian state?”
Tugendhat replied that the government has had “this work ongoing for a number of months now,“ but ”asking for actions to be taken means we must be legally compliant with the responses.”
“That is where we are getting to—we are increasingly at the point where we are taking more and more action against the IRGC,” he said.
‘Different Beast’
When again asked about government action against the Iranian military group, Tugendhat told Democratic Unionist Party MP Jim Shannon he could not go into detail about “individual proscriptions.”Referencing the beginning of Ramadan on Thursday, the minister added: “The reality is that this is a time for communities to come together, yet in Tehran it is time for the regime to ignore the Islamic faith and to tear people apart.”
Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a research fellow with the Henry Jackson Society, said the UK government’s reluctance to proscribe the IRGC might be owing to its state status.
Speaking to The Epoch Times on Tuesday, she said, “I think there’s been an argument made that because the IRGC is a state institution that they [the UK government] would be overstepping [the mark].
“When the UK, for example, proscribed Hamas and Hezbollah, they did so on the basis that they were not state actors, they were militias, that they were behaving like a terrorist organisation, because they are a terrorist organisation, and as such the UK had jurisdiction and had the ability to quite safely proscribe.
“I think that the IRGC is a slightly different beast.”
Perez-Shakdam said that although the IRGC might “masquerade” as a legitimate institution, it is anything but.
“They may want to portray themselves as a legitimate institution, but it doesn’t make it so by claiming it,” she told The Epoch Times.
She said the ISIS terrorist group—which claimed to be a nation state but was internationally designated as a terrorist organisation—is a “perfect example of that.”
She said that when Iran’s Islamic regime was founded in 1979, “everyone was unaware of what they would become and what was the agenda, because we were all lied to—including Iranians.”
“They were lied to essentially—none of the things that they were promised actually came true in terms of protection of their rights and human rights and civil liberties.”
The research fellow said that on the basis that Iran “violated everything,” the UK could “very safely” proscribe IRGC, which she said had “hijacked” the institution.
“It’s an argument that hasn’t been made yet, but I feel that it might be the only argument that we have left,” she said.
In January, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly revealed that over 300 individuals and entities had been sanctioned by the UK over Iran’s violent suppression of protesters.
In February, Parliament heard how armed groups linked to the Iranian regime were behind at least 10 kidnap and death plots on British soil.
