Struan Stevenson | Feb 02, 2026
It is a grim indictment of European timidity that only the slaughter of thousands of innocent protesters on the streets of Iran finally forced the European Union to act. For decades, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been the backbone of repression at home and terror abroad. Its crimes were never hidden. They were merely ignored. Now, quite belatedly, Brussels has moved and only one shameful outlier remains, the United Kingdom. Britain’s refusal to fast-track proscribing the IRGC rests on a feeble and frankly ludicrous argument, that one cannot designate an “organ of a state” as a terrorist organization. This is not a legal principle; it is an excuse. The IRGC is not a conventional arm of a state. It is a parallel military, intelligence and economic empire, answerable not to the Iranian people, and not even to the agencies of the state, but to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who rules through fear, torture and murder. If that does not meet the definition of terrorism, then the word has lost all meaning.
Recent briefings that the UK Government is considering the blacklisting of the IRGC might appear, at first glance, to signal progress. They do not. Officials have already confirmed that any legislation will not be fast-tracked, citing the alleged “complexity” of designating state agencies as terrorists. This is appeasement by procedural delay. Everyone knows what follows. Consultation, caution, prevarication and ultimately inertia. Legislation delayed is legislation designed to die quietly on the shelf.
This reluctance has little to do with law and everything to do with mindset. The British intelligence services and the UK Foreign Office remain wedded to the discredited belief that proscribing the IRGC would “sever diplomatic, and perhaps, business channels” with Tehran. The IRGC, mind you, controls 70 percent of the Iranian economy. The Brits are keen not to do anything that might risk losing a slice of this lucrative, yet blood-soaked, pie. That is precisely the problem. Those channels have produced nothing except impunity for Iran’s executioners. To preserve them at all costs, even as bodies pile up on Iranian streets, is not realism. It is moral surrender.
For more than thirty years, parliamentarians, human rights advocates and Iranian dissidents have demanded the proscription of the IRGC. During those decades, the Revolutionary Guard has assassinated opponents across Europe, armed and trained Hezbollah and Hamas, fueled bloodshed in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and crushed every flicker of dissent inside Iran with bullets, gallows and prison cells. Britain knew all this, but successive governments simply chose to look away.
The EU’s decision, though long overdue, exposes the bankruptcy of London’s position. So too does the reality that the IRGC is already proscribed by the United States, Canada and Australia. Are we really to believe that Britain alone has discovered an insurmountable legal obstacle that all these other democracies somehow missed? Or is the truth that Whitehall remains trapped in the habits of appeasement, still clinging to the fantasy that engagement with Tehran will somehow moderate its behavior?
History tells us the opposite. Every concession to this regime has been interpreted as weakness. Every act of restraint by the West has been answered with greater brutality by the mullahs. The latest nationwide uprising made that abundantly clear. Ordinary Iranians, students, women, workers and pensioners, poured onto the streets demanding dignity, freedom and an end to clerical rule. The regime responded with mass murder. Thousands were killed. Tens of thousands were arrested. Many now face torture, execution or slow death in Iran’s prisons. And still, Western capitals dithered.
Designating the IRGC is not an act of aggression. It is the bare minimum of moral clarity. It would criminalize the IRGC’s vast financial and logistical networks in Britain, disrupt its fundraising and money-laundering operations, and send an unmistakable signal that the UK will no longer provide a safe haven for agents of terror masquerading as diplomats or businessmen. It would also carry the added advantage of tacitly recognizing that the IRGC, its top brass, and garrisons, are legitimate targets, reflecting the Iranian people’s realization that the only path to liberation lies in taking the fight to, and ultimately dismantling, the IRGC.
But proscription alone is not enough. If the Iranian regime is to be treated as the pariah state it has made itself, then its diplomatic privileges must also be withdrawn. Iranian embassies across the UK and EU are not neutral diplomatic missions. They function as intelligence hubs, surveillance centers and coordination points for intimidation and assassination plots against dissidents. Closing them and expelling their staff is not radical, it is prudent self-defense. Reciprocity demands that Western embassies in Tehran should also be closed. For years, our diplomats have operated under constant threat and crippling restrictions, achieving little beyond providing the regime with a fig leaf of legitimacy. Maintaining embassies while the regime hangs protesters and guns down teenagers sends precisely the wrong message.
Some will warn that such measures “isolate” Iran. They are wrong. Iran’s rulers have isolated themselves through their own barbarity. The people of Iran are already isolated, cut off from the internet, the global economy and basic freedoms. What they ask from the West is not engagement with their oppressors, but solidarity with their struggle. By delaying, qualifying and proceduralizing the proscription of the IRGC, Britain places itself on the wrong side of history and morality. That is not pragmatism. It is complicity.
The Iranian people do not want the return of monarchy or the continuation of theocracy. They want a democratic republic, free from clerical rule and foreign adventurism. They have shown extraordinary courage in pursuing that goal, at immense personal cost. The least we can do is stop empowering their executioners.
The choice before Britain is stark. It can remain the last of the arch-appeasers, clinging to discredited excuses and bureaucratic delay. Or it can act now by proscribing the IRGC, closing the Iranian embassy, expelling the regime’s operatives and making clear that terror and tyranny will no longer be indulged. There have been thirty years of excuses. History will not accept a thirty-first.
Link: Appeasement Has Failed: Britain Must Finally Proscribe the IRGC and Close Iran’s Embassy
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