The United Kingdom introduced a new bill on Tuesday, which would allow the home secretary to designate foreign state-linked organizations, notably Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a threat to Britain’s national security.
The National Security (State Threats) Bill, which could be implemented as soon as next month, would permit Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to designate state-linked groups responsible for “foreign power threat activity.” Such “threat activity” includes assassinations, surveillance, and sabotage.
The legislation would make it illegal to express support for designated proxies or to take money from them, providing for jail terms of up to 14 years.
Last year, the director-general of Britain’s MI5 (security service), Ken McCallum, confirmed that the UK had seen a 35% increase in state threat activity from the previous year and that the security service had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots.
Though UK says Iran could be behind attacks, no immediate proscription expected
In recent months, there have been numerous arson attacks on Jewish sites, with police saying they were investigating possible Iranian links. Meanwhile, there have been convictions for people accused of spying or acting on behalf of Russian and Chinese organizations.
Despite British intelligence exposing a number of Iran-backed plots on UK soil, it is not yet clear whether the proscription of the IRGC would be immediately included under the new legislation, with only 10 or fewer designations expected in the first year after it becomes law.
Labour MP Luke Akehurst, one of the leading voices calling for the IRGC’s proscription in the House of Commons, told The Jerusalem Post, “As well as brutally repressing freedoms within Iran, the IRGC poses a dangerous threat here in the UK, which our existing terrorism proscription regime was ill-equipped to deal with as it is a state actor.”
He said, “I had been campaigning for the government to address this for many years, so I commend ministers for introducing crucial new powers to allow us to clamp down on the danger posed by state entities and their activities.”
Last week, an Iraqi national denied involvement in multiple attacks against American and Israeli interests in Europe, including some of the recent attacks in Britain, during a US court appearance.
He is accused of directing people to carry out attacks in the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI), a component of an Iran-backed militia which the US considers a terrorist organization directed by the IRGC.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of State Threats Legislation, noted last month that there were significant failings in Britain’s current counter-terrorism legislation. He specifically highlighted that the National Security Act of 2023 has been less effective at disrupting proxies than foreign intelligence services.
IRGC poses different threat than ISIS, al-Qaeda, expert tells 'Post'
Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a former British Army intelligence officer, explained to the Post that Britain’s counter-terrorism laws had originally been designed for terrorism from Northern Ireland and adapted to address ”the threat of overseas Islamist terrorist groups operating globally, and homegrown Islamist terrorist groups operating in the UK. It was not designed to deal with foreign government agencies conducting covert operations in the UK.”
“This new bill is designed to enable the UK police and security services to deal with foreign government agencies like Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, its foreign operations unit, an armed force that is part of – indeed arguably the ruling part of – the Iranian government,” she noted.
Nusbacher advised against treating the IRGC like a typical terrorist organization by ignoring the fact it is backed and legitimized through the Islamic Republic. The previous legislation couldn’t account for this, nor tackle threats from other state actors like Russia and China, she added.
Though this new legislation is a step in the right direction, Nusbacher warned that police and security services lacked the appropriate resources to investigate hostile-state-linked threats, and so “the police and security services will have additional powers, but without the resources to exercise them.”
Nusbacher was also afraid of how such loose paradigms would be applied, particularly in relation to Israel.
“There is very little to distinguish the armed forces operating in wartime from terrorists, except in some particularly sophisticated definitions largely used by theorists and academics.
“We have seen in recent years, for instance, that the use of armed force has attracted accusations of state terrorism and accusations that operations of war amount to war crimes and genocide. It is a virtual certainty that if His Majesty’s Government applied the Terrorism Act to members or supporters of the IRGC, the same legislation would fairly soon be applied to members, veterans, or supporters of the IDF,” she warned.
“The wrong answer would have been to pretend that the IRGC is like Daesh/ISIS or al-Qaeda, when the IRGC is a lot more like the KGB in the old days: a government agency acting with ruthless violence as well as clever disinformation to spy on and to disrupt the United Kingdom,” Nusbacher concluded.