Former Labour Home Secretary: Government could ban part of IRGC now under current laws

Britain should immediately ban Quds Force, the external terror wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, under existing terror legislation, former home secretary David Blunkett has said.

In a foreword to a new report published by Labour Friends of Israel he argues: “Despite the continuing war, the regime intends to survive, and its new leadership are as odious and hard-line as their predecessors.” Lord Blunkett cited Canada as an example of a country which had moved to proscribe Quds Force first before ultimately proscribing the IRGC in its entirety. He also called for the British government to “accelerate the implementation of recommendations set out by Jonathan Hall KC last year, which will allow the UK to proscribe the entirety of the IRGC.”

LFI’s new policy paper: Unleashing hell: Time to ban Tehran’s terror army, details the Islamic Republic’s brutal repression of its own people and calls for the proscription of the IRGC, recognition of the regime’s crimes against humanity and to protect Britons from this threat.

Blunkett described how “the new head of the IRGC, Ahmad Vahidi, is an internationally wanted terrorist who has been implicated in the murderous 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.

“As interior minister, Vahidi presided over the brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022. His record symbolises the pernicious, dual-nature of the IRGC as an instrument of terror overseas and on the streets of Iran.”

The paper’s author, former Iran International director of security Roger Macmillan, argues that “the case for proscribing the IRGC-QF does not weaken in the fog of war; it sharpens. If the IRGC consolidates further power in the post-Khamenei order, the UK will face not a weakened adversary open to diplomacy, but an enhanced militarised state whose new commander personally embodies the fusion of international terrorism and domestic atrocity.”

Macmillan’s paper calls for the government to urgently make parliamentary time to bring forward new legislation allowing it to ban the IRGC in its entirety.

The report recommends a number of steps the UK can take now to address the threat from the Islamic Republic and the IRGC.

The government says it is working on new laws, as recommended by Hall, to prescribe state linked groups like the IRGC.