A senior Conservative MP has called on the government to shut down the “London Office” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that is located in the heart of the Jewish community in north London.
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle, Alicia Kearns MP, who is chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said the Islamic Centre of England (ICE) in Maida Vale was an “arm of the Iranian state” and was being used to intimidate Iranian dissidents in the UK.
The centre has controversially publicly supported IRGC terrorists in the past and her intervention will be seen as adding more pressure on the government to finally proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
The IRGC oversees Iran’s funding and direction of terror groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and controls its nuclear weapons and missile programme. Kearns said ICE was was “solely there to spread the word of the Islamic repressive regime”.
ICE held a huge vigil for its terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani following his death in a US drone strike in 2020 with pictures showing children encouraged to honour him as a “martyr”, reports the JC.
It was also one of the locations used for an Iranian propaganda film, posted on IRGC-controlled websites, in which dozens of children sang a song that referenced an apocalyptic myth about massacring Jews — although ICE denied their “local version of the song” carried this meaning.
Its director, Seyed Moosavi, has previously described protesters against the regime as “soldiers of Satan” in a sermon at the centre in Maida Vale, central London.
During an interview with the BBC Today Programme, Kearns said: “I would like to see the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp office in Maida Vale closed. There is a, they like to call it an outreach centre, an Islamic centre. The head of it was appointed directly by the Supreme Leader of Iran. This is an organisation that is solely there to spread the word of the Islamic repressive regime.”
She also said that proscribing the IRGC “would be a big shift in policy because that would be the first time that we recognise that States can undertake terrorism.”
She added: “The reality is this is a terror state, they have tried to undertake ten assassinations in the UK over the last few years, they’ve undertaken more assassinations than any other state in Western Europe, in Ukraine they’re an aggressor, and they’ve regularly attacked our Kurdish allies, they’ve turned Syria into a drugs den, and militias in Iraq are backed by them, as well as Hezbollah and Hamas.”
“This is a terrorist state that threatens us on so many levels beyond what we are currently seeing. Unfortunately we now have to change our posture.”
The Community Security Trust, which provides security and advice to Jewish centres in the UK, said “It is absurd that this centre, located in the heart of London’s Jewish community, is allowed to continue its activities, and even more outrageous that it is a registered charity, given its strong links to the government of Iran — a government with a long record of antisemitism, Holocaust denial and terrorism against Jewish communities.”
Backing calls for the IRGC to be proscribed by the government, Kearns told the Jewish Chronicle that ICE was being used to intimidate Iranian dissidents in the UK.
She added, “We should close the ICE because there is no question that it is an arm of the Iranian state, and that it exists to spread the malign ideas of the worst characters in the IRGC. The Iranian community feels intimidated by it, and we should listen to that diaspora.”
Kearns said there was “no question that the IRGC should be proscribed as a terrorist organisation immediately. It commits terrorist acts on behalf of a hostile regime”.
Meanwhile, Steve McCabe MP, the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, said the government “should launch an urgent investigation” into ICE.
He said: “The Conservatives, under successive prime ministers, have been far too soft on Tehran. The sanctions are weak and poorly applied and it’s a disgrace they are still dragging their feet on proscribing the IRGC.
“I hope they’ll act quickly and for once seize the opportunity to make clear that the UK will not be a safe haven for the Iranian regime’s hateful propaganda, its agents or its surrogates.”
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