Over the last few years, there have been a number of calls, both from Jewish communal organisations and Iranian dissidents, for the UK to proscribe the IRGC – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But what is the IRGC, and why do people feel it should be proscribed?
A state within a state
Immediately after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomenei ordered the establishment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Created as a military force, it was separate from the Iranian army, and specifically tasked with maintaining and strengthening the regime itself, as opposed to the country.
There are five official branches of the IRGC – the first three are ground, naval and air forces, separate from the official Iranian army, navy and air force.
The fourth branch is known as “Quds Force” – “Quds” being the Arabic name for Jerusalem. It is the military intelligence and special operations arm of the IRGC, and is primarily responsible, for example, for the aid, weapons and training given to Iran’s proxy forces in the Middle East. It also heavily involved in global trafficking, with reported close ties to Russian mafia and South American drug cartels.
The fifth branch is the Basij, the paramilitary force who act as the regime’s enforcers on local level in return for special privileges. This includes the so-called “morality police”, as well as law enforcement auxiliaries.
However, the IRGC has expanded into every facet of Iranian society. As mentioned above, the Basij enforce the social laws of the regime. But the organisation also exercises significant economic control – reportedly around a third of Iran’s entire economy.
For example, it controls an engineering firm called Khatam al-Anbia, which is one of the country’s largest industrial and development contractors, awarded lucrative construction projects by the government worth billions. The IRGC has interests in housing, roads and transport and food production.
In other words, the IRGC is integral to the Iranian regime and its continued survival.
Repression and terror
The foremost victims of the IRGC are the Iranian people themselves. The organisation has been directly involved in multiple examples of the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protests. The Basij militia played an active role in the quelling of the 2019 Bloody November protests (in which more than 1,500 civilians were murdered) and the Women Life Freedom protests in 2022 (in which approximately 500 civilians were murdered).
Protestors against the regime in 2019 (Credit: Creative Commons/ Fars Media Corporation)
Additionally, the IRGC, either directly or through the proxies it controls, has been responsible for multiple terror attacks around the world. These include, but are not limited to, bombings of US army personnel (in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia) and attacks on Israeli diplomats (as in Argentina, India and Thailand). They are also responsible for direct attacks on Jewish communities. The 1985 bombings in Copenhagen included, among other targets, a Synagogue and Jewish community centre. The 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community centre in Buenos Aires killed 94 and injured hundreds.
The aftermath of the AMIA bombing
There have also been numerous examples of authorities preventing intended attacks. The most infamous recent example involves a foiled attack, intended to place bombs at a mass anti-regime rally in Paris in 2018.
In 2022, Tom Tugendhat MP, then Minister of State for Security, confirmed in the House of Commons that the British Government was aware that the Iranian Regime had drawn up kill lists, including prominent Jewish people and Iranian dissidents, in the event of an all-out war between Iran and Israel. Such lists can only have been drawn up – and potentially, in time, activated – by the IRGC.
Supporters of IRGC proscription note that the UK Government has – correctly – proscribed both Hamas and Hezbollah in their entirety. Given that is the case, it would seem to make a great deal of sense to also proscribe the organisation which has armed, trained and funded these organisations.
Proscription status – worldwide, and in the UK
The IRGC has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Canada and Sweden. It is not currently proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK.
In 2023, the then-Home Secretary indicated that she was preparing to proscribe the IRGC, but this failed to happen, with rumours that the Foreign Office had opposed the move. While in Opposition, the Labour Party pledged to proscribe the IRGC when in government; however, while they introduced more sanctions on individual IRGC senior leaders, they have not proscribed the organisation itself.
Additional moves by the Government to clamp down on those in the UK being directed to advance the interest of specific foreign countries are due to come into effect this summer. In March, the current Minister of State for Security, Dan Jarvis MP, also confirmed that a review is currently being conducted into “parts of our counter-terrorism framework which could be applied to modern day state threats, such as those from Iran.”
UK Actions
In 2024, it was revealed that senior former and active generals in the IRGC had spoken to British students at a number of events in 2020 and 2021. These were organised by the Islamic Students Associations of Britain (ISA), an organisation founded to promote the ideology put forward by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the current Iranian regime. Videos of the talks included a description of an apocalyptic war on Jews, as well as an example of Holocaust denial.
Last month, three alleged Iranian spies were arrested in London and later appeared in custody at Westminster Crown Court. They were accused of targeting UK based journalists of the dissident news channel, Iran International. One was charged with engaging in surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research with the intention of committing serious violence against a person in the UK, while the other two were charged with surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research with the intention that serious violence against a person in the UK would be committed by others.
Calls for proscription
More than 200 MPs called for the full proscription of the IRGC last month, after the announcement of the arrest of the suspected Iranian spies.
Communal organisations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust have all repeatedly called for the IRGC to be proscribed in full in this country.
Other groups which have supported proscription include the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the Henry Jackson Society.
