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The U.K. and the E.U. must declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization
By: Dan Diker
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is mandated by Iran’s constitution to pursue “an ideological mission of jihad in the way of Allah, that is, extending sovereignty of Allah’s law throughout the world.”
This mandate is not theoretical or merely declarative. The IRGC is actively involved in terrorist operations around the globe and has therefore been deemed illegal by the U.S. government. Great Britain and Europe should follow suit.
Since the founding of this paramilitary force in 1979, the IRGC has emerged as the principal organization advancing the Iranian regime’s revolutionary Shiite Islamist ideology within and beyond the regime’s borders.
Over the past four decades, it has been linked to terrorist attacks, hostage-taking, maritime piracy, political assassinations, human rights violations and the crushing of domestic dissent across Iran.
It was more recently responsible for the bloodshed on the streets of Iran in Nov. 2019, leaving 1,500 people dead in less than two weeks.
Iran targets its neighbors in its race for regional hegemony in service of its nuclear weapons program and radical Shiite eschatological vision. Through the IRGC, it spreads terrorism globally and subverts governments in the Middle East and Africa.
The IRGC provides financial and other material support, training, technology transfer, advanced conventional weapons and guidance to a broad range of terrorist organizations including Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, al-Ashtar Brigades in Bahrain, the Yemeni Houthis and other terrorist groups in Syria, the entire area of the Persian Gulf and Africa’s Sahel region.
Within its borders, Iran has also harbored Al-Qaeda terrorists who have transferred money and fighters to South Asia and Syria. In 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department identified and sanctioned three senior AQ operatives residing in Iran and known to the regime. These operatives included 9/11 hijackers transiting its territory on their way to Afghanistan for training and operational planning.
The U.S. government considers Iran to be the foremost state sponsor of terrorism—spending more than $1 billion on terrorist financing annually—and there are between 140,000 and 185,000 IRGC-Quds Force partner forces in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.
In its efforts to export the Islamic Revolution across the Middle East, the IRGC advances radical Islamist groups, both Shiite and Sunni, around the globe, including Iraq’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which it armed, funded and directed to conduct more than 6,000 attacks on American and British forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Iran continues to threaten Israel openly, with its ideology centered on the destruction of Israel.
IRGC terror in the United Kingdom and continental Europe
The IRGC has been involved in extraterritorial activities targeting Iranian dissidents and opposition figures beyond Iran’s borders, resulting in a chilling effect on freedom of expression and political participation among Iranians residing in the West.
The IRGC is responsible for kidnapping and the extraterritorial and extrajudicial execution of journalists and dual nationals outside of Iran.
In the U.K., dual British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari, who had previously held a senior position in the Iranian government, was lured back to Iran in 2022, arrested, incarcerated and then executed on spurious espionage charges, an act condemned by both UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Minister James Cleverly as barbaric.
On Jan. 12, 2023, the House of Commons voted unanimously in favor of a measure calling for the UK to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
In Feb. 2023, the chief of MI5 reported foiling or exposing at least 15 kidnapping or assassination plots by the IRGC targeting U.K. citizens since Jan. 2022 alone.
On the European continent, Germany also uncovered ten IRGC operatives involved in a terrorist plot within German borders and convicted another IRGC agent for surveilling a German-Israeli group. Germany is also pursuing prosecution against IRGC operatives who plotted attacks against synagogues in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Jan. 2018.
In Belgium in 2022, an Iranian diplomat was convicted on terrorism charges for his role in a 2018 plot in Paris, and authorities in Georgia reportedly prevented the IRGC’s attempted assassination of an Israeli-Georgian businessman in Tbilisi.
In addition, the IRGC supplied arms and drones to Russia in its war with Ukraine and in 2020 was responsible for shooting down Ukrainian Flight 752 with two surface-to-air missiles, killing 176 passengers and crew.
IRGC penetration of the United States
The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed indictments against IRGC operatives in several murder-for-hire schemes on American soil, including the targeting of former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In 2011, the IRGC Quds Force plotted an attack against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. on American soil.
Additional IRGC assassination attempts in the U.S. include those against Iranian-American human rights activist Asih Alinejad and Indian-Iranian author Salman Rushdie, whom the Iranian regime offered a $3 million reward for his death in 1989 upon publication of Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses.
Though the Iranian regime denied ordering the stabbing of Rushdie in 2022, it offered farmland in Iran as an award to the young American who stabbed him, thanking him “for his brave action in carrying out the historic fatwa of Imam Khomeini.”
The IRGC’s hand in the Middle East
The IRGC has targeted Arab countries and Israel for decades via its Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Houthi proxies, among others. The IRGC has targeted Saudi Arabia via its proxy Hezbollah al-Hejaz, which carried out its first attack at the Hajj in Mecca in 1987.
More recently, the IRGC has fueled Hamas rocket wars against Israel, with senior Iranian operatives maintaining a physical presence in the Gaza Strip since 2014 to advise Hamas operatives on drone operation and rocket production.
The IRGC has done the same for Houthi rebels in Yemen targeting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, creating havoc in the Gulf. In Jan. 2022, the Houthis attacked the Emiratis using Iranian drones and exploded three fuel tanks in an attack on Abu Dhabi airport.
The IRGC funds and directs Bahrain’s Saraya al-Ashtar, the military wing of Hezbollah Bahrain, which aims to destabilize the kingdom by radicalizing its domestic extremists.
In June 2023, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei instructed the IRGC to intensify its attacks via Palestinian terror proxies Islamic Jihad and Hamas from Judea and Samaria, an area that overlooks Israel’s main cities.
IRGC officials assured PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhallah that Iranian weapons and cash would be smuggled to his organization and to Hamas in the West Bank, and demanded that rocket facilities be set up in northern Samaria, near Ben-Gurion airport overlooking the greater Tel Aviv area.
The IRGC also significantly supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government militias by providing them with military advisers, training, arms and force coordination. The Syrian government and its allies, including the IRGC, have caused the deaths of over half a million Syrian civilians, displacing over 10 million people and creating a refugee crisis.
In Turkey in 2022, IRGC operatives were foiled in their plan to murder Israeli tourists and assassinate Yosef Levi-Sfari, the former Israeli consul in Istanbul. The IRGC has also employed criminal gangs in various countries, including Turkey, for terrorist operations.
The IRGC also fuels tensions and war in Hamas-ruled Gaza, with its operatives involved in terror tunnel assaults against Israel. IRGC’s Quds Force has made efforts to arm Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank on the orders of their Supreme Leader Khamenei.
In Aug. 2022, following the IDF’s Operation Breaking Dawn against Islamic Jihad in Gaza, IRGC Maj.-Gen. Hossein Salami and PIJ leader Ziyad al-Nakhallah met, resulting in an agreement to enhance PIJ’s activities in Samaria.
Besides conventional warfare via proxy, IRGC-backed Hamas operatives have engaged in espionage, monitored Iranian-Israeli Jews’ social networks and obtained their personal details, which were submitted to Iranian intelligence with the aim of recruiting them into Iranian espionage rings.
IRGC intervention and narco-terrorism in Latin America
The IRGC has developed a major presence in Latin America, primarily in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, where Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently visited, calling his visits “strategic” against common enemies.
The IRGC has long ratcheted up its presence in Latin America’s tri-border area where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet. During the visit, Venezuela’s President Maduro declared his intention to install a bust of former IRGC leader Qassem Sulemani, killed in an American drone strike in 2020.
Iran has engaged in narco-terrorism and the use of organized crime—including drug trafficking, trafficking in illegal products, counterfeiting of products, human trafficking, smuggling of weapons, smuggling of immigrants, money laundering and gambling—using profits for military, organizational and terror operations.
The IRGC’s narco-terrorism extends from Western Europe to Latin America. The IRGC is extensively connected to the Afghan drug trade and other international criminal syndicates to develop a network for distributing narcotics, especially heroin, to Western countries via Eastern Europe.
Using its local Lebanese expatriate connections, the IRGC’s top proxy Hezbollah is involved in narco-terrorism mainly in Colombia and Mexico. These funds enhance Hezbollah’s military and assist Iran, allowing Iran to claim plausible deniability.
Narco-terrorism also includes terror attempts on the ground. In 2011, an Iranian spy attempted to recruit a member of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. This Iranian agent also intended to attack the Israeli embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.
The IRGC has also targeted Israeli diplomats and facilities in Argentina, India and Thailand, bombing the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people.
(JNS.org)
Dan Diker is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the longtime director of its Counter-Political Warfare Project.
