British politicians are pressuring Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Home Office to officially proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization under the 2020 Terrorism Acts.
While UK politicians have long raised concerns about the IRGC’s activities in the UK, the country has yet to make the move.
However, with the announcement that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is moving to ban Palestine Action, along with recent events, such as a violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters outside Iran’s London embassy and the ongoing Iranian bombing of Israel, the cry for a similar IRGC ban has grown louder.
Labour backbenchers, including Luke Akehurst and Charlotte Nichols, called on their party to make the move.
Other MPs make their voices heard
Akehurst, the MP for North Durham, told The Daily Telegraph: “I thoroughly welcome the move to proscribe Palestine Action after their violent attacks on defense companies and, most alarmingly, on RAF Brize Norton.”
“It’s now urgent, given the conflict in Iran,” he continued, “that the government moves to proscribe the IRGC, which is a terrorist organization that represents a significant threat, including here in the UK.”
Nichols, the MP for Warrington North, said, “They should have done it a long time ago, but the second-best time is now.”
Labour MP and chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, Jon Pearce, told The Sun that the Iranian regime is a threat to “our way of life and peace all over the world.”
“Our first duty as a government is to protect the British people, and we urge ministers to complete this process as soon as possible,” he said.
Outside the governing party, Conservative MP David Davis wrote that “Iran and their notorious IRGC are a direct threat to people here in Britain,” adding that “proscribing the IRGC is well overdue.”
He called on the Labour Party to act now “to prevent UK citizens from being harmed.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch penned an op-ed in The Times in which she called for the government to support its “ally” Israel as it “seeks to damage Iran’s nuclear [program] and eliminate the threat posed by the terror-exporting Revolutionary Guards.”
Former home secretary Suella Braverman told The Sun, “The government must grow a backbone and ban the IRGC. They fund hate on our streets, and radicalize people against our country and values.”
“It’s high time we cut the head off the snake in the UK,” Braverman added.
The Jerusalem Post reached out to both Number 10 Downing Street and the Home Office for comment.
Previous discussions about proscription
In November 2024, a cross-party cohort of 45 MPs and party members sent a letter to the prime minister requesting that the IRGC be proscribed.
The letter, which the Henry Jackson Society supported, drew from a plethora of examples of the IRGC’s activities in the UK, including cyberattacks, assassinations, and covert operations targeting dissident civilians.
It raised the fact that, between January 2022 and the time of the letter, there were 20 credible threats against British citizens and UK-based individuals, all linked to Iran and the IRGC.
“Many of the signatories of this letter have been sanctioned by the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to our shared critique of the IRGC and the Iranian regime,” the letter read.
“By proscribing the IRGC, not only would its resources be subject to seizure, but public support for the group would be criminalized,” it added.
“This step is especially critical,” the letter continued, “as public displays glorifying dangerous organizations have increasingly surfaced on the streets of London in recent months.”
Among the signatories were IRGC-sanctioned Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, Lord David Alton, Sir Richard Dearlove, and Lord Stuart Polak.
The issue of proscription had been debated earlier in 2024 during the Tory (Conservative) party rule.
Then-foreign secretary David Cameron told the House of Lords International Relations and Defense Committee in April that the existing sanctions against Iran were sufficient and that proscription would be unnecessary.
He had claimed that such a move would “effectively end diplomatic relations,” something that he believed was “not in Britain’s interest.”
“We have sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety. When I ask law enforcement, police, intelligence services, and others: Is this extra step of proscription necessary to take further action against these people when they do the things that we disapprove of? The answer is: No,” Cameron had said.
Some other countries proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist entity, including the US (it is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 2019 – the first time that the US designated part of a foreign government as such), Canada (June 2024), Paraguay (April 2025), as well as Israel, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
The EU has yet to proscribe it, but the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2023 urging designation.