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Ministers will introduce new laws allowing them to ban Iran's Revolutionary Guard but won't fast track the process - as the EU joined America in labelling it a terrorist group.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has led a deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters that has killed more than 30,000 people in recent weeks, according to one estimate from two officials at Iran's health ministry.
Yesterday, the EU added the IRGC to its list of designated organisations alongside al-Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic State - citing its role in the brutal repression.
As pressure grew on the UK to act, the Home Office confirmed it was preparing legislation to proscribe hostile state agencies including the IRGC, but said the bill would not be expedited in response to the bloodshed.
Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said the brutality of the Iranian regime is an 'affront to humanity' and has called for a rapid ban.
The Tory frontbencher said: 'The Labour Government's silence on the IRGC is appalling.
'We have said that we would work with them to bring forward the legal and legislative mechanisms for the UK to take action.
'Britain must stand up for the Iranian people and confront this vile regime with strength and resolve.'
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has led a deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters. Pictured are soldiers at a rally in 2024
The IRGC is a violent, Islamist-extremist organisation that was founded by acolytes of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to defend the Islamic Republic of Iran's core values.
It uses a mix of terror, extreme violence and ideological warfare to safeguard the Islamic Republic's revolution and target its enemies. It's been linked to kidnaps, assassinations and terror attacks.
Announcing the EU decision yesterday, the bloc's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: 'Repression cannot go unanswered.
'EU foreign ministers just took the decisive step of designating Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation.'
Government sources have said proposed laws will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows, but have not been drawn on which specific groups might be banned.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy condemned the Iranian regime's 'brutal repression' of demonstrators on Wednesday but said it was 'a long-standing position under successive governments not to comment on whether a specific organisation is being considered for proscription'.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the EU's designation as a 'PR stunt' and said Europe would be affected if energy prices surge as a result of the sanctions.
'Several countries are presently attempting to avert the eruption of all-out war in our region. None of them are European,' he wrote on X.
Kristina Kausch, a deputy director at the German Marshall Fund, said the listing was 'a symbolic act' showing that for the EU 'the dialogue path hasn't led anywhere, and now it's about isolation and containment as a priority.'
'The designation of a state military arm, of an official pillar of the Iranian state, as a terrorist organization, is one step short of cutting diplomatic ties,' she said.
The Revolutionary Guard now has time to comment before the listing is formally adopted, said Edouard Gergondet, a lawyer focused on sanctions with the firm Mayer Brown.
An IRGC soldier firing an assault rifle during a military drill in the Gulf
The EU yesterday also sanctioned 15 top officials and six organizations in Iran, including those involved in monitoring online content, as the country remains gripped by a three-week internet blackout by authorities.
The sanctions mean that affected officials and organizations will have their assets frozen, and they will be banned from traveling to Europe, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.
The Revolutionary Guard holds vast business interest across Iran, and sanctions could allow its assets in Europe to be seized.
The Guard emerged from Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution.
It operated in parallel with the country's regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s.
The Guard's Basij force is believed to have played a key role in putting down demonstrations, starting in earnest from January 8, when authorities cut off the Internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85million people.
Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.
Once they reach the age of 18, Iranian men are required to do up to two years of military service, and many find themselves conscripted into the Guard regardless of their own politics.
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.'
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