Overview
- The UK government has used newly created state‑threat powers to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and two affiliated units as security threats.
- Draft regulations lodged with Parliament would make public support or assistance to those bodies a criminal offence with reported prison terms up to 14 years.
- London also named the Iran‑linked Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right and Russia’s GRU Volunteer Corps in the same action.
- Diplomatic tensions have risen this week after Britain summoned Iran’s Charge d’Affaires in London and Tehran summoned the British ambassador and warned the move would “not go unanswered.”
- Officials say the measure responds to a series of incidents they attribute to Iran‑directed proxies, and it follows similar IRGC blacklists recently adopted by countries in the Americas such as Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Honduras.