A new report has confirmed what CUFI has long been warning: the threat from Iran on the UK is not only real, but growing. The findings, detailed in a government-commissioned review, highlight a “significant increase” in hostile activity linked to Tehran, with British Jewish and Israeli interests identified as priority targets.
According to the report, commissioned by the Home Office and authored by terror finance expert Matthew Levitt, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are “engaged in multiple plots” against British individuals and institutions, particularly those with ties to Israel and the Jewish community. Levitt warns that “the IRGC is becoming more operational in targeting dissidents and perceived enemies abroad, including in the UK.”
Between 2020 and 2022 alone, British intelligence reportedly disrupted at least 15 Iranian plots on UK soil. These were not vague threats or distant plans—they were active operations. The report details how these plots include surveillance of Jewish community sites, targeting Israeli-affiliated institutions, and even intentions to carry out assassinations or kidnappings of UK-based individuals deemed hostile to the Iranian regime. These are not speculative concerns, they are documented threats aimed directly at the Jewish community, and the scale of them is unprecedented.
The report noted how British intelligence officials had testified that Iranian operatives have shown a willingness “to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK.”
“The threat of physical attack on individuals in the UK is now the greatest level of threat we currently face from Iran,” the Homeland Security Group told the Committee. “It is comparable with the threat posed by Russia.”
The report further reveals that Iran uses “third parties and criminal gangs” to carry out its dirty work, meaning that it can distance itself whilst maintaining control. The IRGC’s tactics are becoming increasingly “aggressive, sophisticated, and emboldened,” with a clear objective to silence dissent and intimidate those with links to Israel here in Britain.
The committee urged the Government to make clear to Tehran that such attempts would “constitute an attack on the UK and would receive the appropriate response”.
Committee chairman Lord Beamish said: “Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals and UK interests”.
Describing Iran’s “high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity”, he added: “As the committee was told, Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with.”
His committee also recommended that the Government consider whether it was “legally possible and practicable” to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation and make a full statement to Parliament on the issue.
This is not just a matter of intelligence warnings, it’s a matter of national security. The IRGC is already banned in the US and designated as a terrorist group across several allied nations. Yet, despite repeated calls from Jewish leaders, counterterrorism experts, and cross-party MPs, the UK government has failed to take this essential step.
As the report concludes, “The IRGC’s actions are inconsistent with the norms of state behaviour and represent a clear and present danger to the UK.”
This latest intelligence makes it undeniable: the UK can no longer afford inaction. It is high time the government moved beyond words and acted before it is too late.
ACT NOW: Call upon the UK government to ban the IRGC
The UK government should immediately ban the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is shameful that this has not already happened.
Why the IRGC must be banned:
The IRGC poses a direct threat to UK citizens, especially members of the British Jewish community, UK nationals with ties to Israel, and broader UK interests in the Middle East and Gulf region.
It actively arms, funds, and trains terrorist organisations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis.
The UK’s 2019 full proscription of Hezbollah was the right decision—and similar action should now be taken against the IRGC.
The IRGC’s Quds Force is openly committed to exporting Iran’s revolutionary ideology and destroying Israel, which it calls a “cancerous tumour” and the “Zionist regime” that must be “eradicated.”
We must not allow the Iranian regime and its supporters to dictate British foreign policy. We must not let Israel stand alone.
