UK Government set to ban Iran’s Revolutionary Guards | World | News

The UK is set to introduce a landmark law to ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which have been at the centre of Tehran’s violent crackdown of the recent anti-government protests. The Home Office said it was preparing legislation to proscribe hostile state agencies – including the IRGC.

The bill, however, will not be fast-tracked, The Times reports, despite growing pressure around the world to respond to the deadly suppression carried out by the group of the protests that have shaken the regime between late December and January. This comes just hours after the European Union added, on January 29, the IRGC to its terrorist list. Announcing the move, Vice President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas said: “Repression cannot go unanswered”.

The 27-strong bloc now places the IRCG on the same level as al-Qaeda and ISIS. 

Ms Kallas said she expected diplomatic channels with Tehran to remain open despite the move, which was branded a “stunt” by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. He also described the EU’s decision as a “major strategic mistake”.

The Home Office has been working on terror-style proscription legislation since May. At the time, the then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she was accepting recommendations from Jonathan Hall, the government’s independent adviser on terrorism legislation, to introduce a law that would enable agencies such as the IRGC to be banned.  

The legislation being planned would allow more targeted action, including give the police powers to seize passports from individuals suspected of operating for the IRGC. 

The time being taken by ministers to draft the legislation is likely due to its legal and diplomatic complexities and ramifications, amid reported concerns proscribing the IRGC could result in severing official communications with Iran. 

A government spokesman said: “We utterly condemn the terrible violence being used by the Iranian regime against those exercising their right to peaceful protest.

“The government has already sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety, as well as more than 550 Iranian individuals and entities, and set out a robust package of measures to tackle threats from the Iranian regime.”

An estimate by Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) suggests that, since the protests began in late December, more than 25,000 may have been killed. However, the internet blackout imposed by Iranian authorities and a ban on most international news outlets from reporting inside the country makes it more difficult to assess the scale of the violent crackdown.  

Iranian authorities have said more than 3,100 people had been killed in the protests, but claimed most of the fatalities were security personnel or bystanders attacked by “rioters”.