LONDON ― Britain will declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group and place sanctions on the elite paramilitary organization that is expanding control of the country.
The designation comes after U.K. authorities linked the IRGC and its proxies to a wave of violent plots on British soil, including bombing and assassination attempts targeting Iranian journalists and activists in Britain.
British officials will also outlaw a shadowy Islamist militant group that has claimed responsibility for the burning of ambulances operated by a Jewish community organization in north London and for plotting against other targets including the Israeli Embassy.
The United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist-supporting organization seven years ago. Britain had refrained from doing so in part over a reluctance to apply the terrorist label to the security agencies of national governments. The IRGC is increasingly indistinguishable from the regime, with broad influence over the economy and military as well as Hezbollah, Hamas and other regional proxy groups.
The U.K. position toward Iran has hardened in recent years amid a surge in attacks. The director of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, said in October that the agency had tracked “more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” in a 12-month period.
The Home Office said in a statement Monday that Britain would “be better protected from foreign state-backed activity” because of the designations and that anyone “conducting acts of sabotage including arson on behalf of these groups could face life imprisonment.”
The puts Britain, which maintains diplomatic relations with Iran, in more open conflict with a hard-line Islamist force that has consolidated its grip on power since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in late February.
U.K. officials also drew a more direct line between Tehran and an Islamist militant group that surfaced in recent months with online posts claiming responsibility for stabbings, arson and other attacks in Britain and other countries.
The group, called the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, or IMCR, has “claimed seven attacks at U.K. locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and Persian-language media,” the Home Office statement said. “Sitting behind IMCR were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, who almost certainly directed IMCR attacks across Europe.”
The organization appears to have orchestrated some attacks but exaggerated its reach by claiming credit for others, according to British officials.
Jewish communities have been targeted repeatedly. The overnight burning of four ambulances operated by the Hatzola organization in Golders Green — a suburb in north London — was followed a month later by a stabbing of Jewish residents on a busy street in the same neighborhood.
Separately, Britain also designated the “volunteer corps” of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, an organization that Western officials have linked to arson attacks, bombing attempts and other sabotage operations across Europe.
“We will never let Britain be a playground for states who want to spread fear, division and violence on our streets,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement, adding that the move would “make it easier to prosecute and lock up anyone carrying out their dirty work here in Britain.”
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