No more delay! Britain should ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards
For several years CUFI has called for the IRGC to be proscribed through our Operation Mordecai campaign, which has sought to raise the alarm about Iran’s threat to Israel and the West. As recent as last year, thousands of CUFI supporters pressed the government not to delay any further. These calls were disregarded. On 14th April, Israel was targeted by the largest ever ballistic missile attack in world history. Incredibly, 99% of the threat was thwarted and Britain had a large part to play in defending Israel militarily. But it is yet another reminder that the IRGC is a terrorist group that should be banned immediately. The UK should also not delay in imposing new sanctions against the Iranian regime.
Here are a few reasons why the IRGC should be banned:
- The IRGC represents a threat to UK citizens, the British Jewish Community, other UK nationals with connections to Israel and general British interests with the Middle East and Gulf states.
- The IRGC supports, arms, trains and funds other terrorist organisations including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. These Iranian-backed proxies will be emboldened even more than they already are by not holding the IRGC to account.
- The IRGC’s Quds (Jerusalem) Force aims to act as an army with a mandate to export the Iranian revolution overseas and “liberate Palestine” through destroying Israel, which Iran describes as the “Zionist regime” and a “cancerous tumour” that must be “eradicated.”
- Proscribing the IRGC would not prevent diplomatic engagement with Iran, which the Foreign Office claims. It would make it clear which areas of Iranian activity are unacceptable.