Sunak faces new calls to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after Israel attack

Rishi Sunak is facing cross-party pressure to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group after Tehran’s assault on Israel over the weekend.

The shadow defence secretary, John Healey, and the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith accused the government of being slow to act in the face of evidence of a growing risk to UK interests.

Duncan Smith, who was one of 90 Tory MPs to sign a letter calling for a ban last year, said he understood that the US had asked Downing Street to proscribe the group, as he described ministers’ justifications for failing to do so as “absurd”.

In January, the UK imposed sanctions on individual members of the IRGC’s Unit 840 over plots to assassinate two television presenters from the news channel Iran International on British soil.

The government said at the time that the plot was “just the latest credible reporting of the regime’s attempt to intimidate or kill British nationals or UK-linked individuals, with at least 15 such threats taking place since January 2022”.

The letter said: “I am also writing on behalf of the British Jewish community to reiterate our request that the Iranian regime’s IRGC – Islamic Revolutionary Guard – be proscribed as a terrorist organisation in its entirety.