Blacklist Iran’s Revolutionary Guards: UK MPs Demand Terror Designation

Black­list­ing Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards is now a top pri­or­i­ty for UK law­mak­ers. On 6 May 2025, Iran Inter­na­tion­al report­ed that the arrest of five Iran­ian nation­als on ter­ror charges across the UK had led to renewed calls by law­mak­ers to des­ig­nate Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. The arrests, involv­ing sus­pects alleged­ly hours away from attack­ing a spe­cif­ic loca­tion, have inten­si­fied polit­i­cal pres­sure for offi­cial pro­scrip­tion of the IRGC. The arti­cle begins:

The arrest of five Iran­ian nation­als on ter­ror charges across the UK has led to renewed calls by law­mak­ers to des­ig­nate Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Secu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dan Jarvis told Par­lia­ment on Tues­day that the arrests marked “the first Iran­ian nation­als arrest­ed under the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act.” He said the Iran­ian state-includ­ing the IRGC and the Min­istry of Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty-had pre­vi­ous­ly been placed on the enhanced tier of the for­eign influ­ence reg­is­tra­tion scheme. “Any­one in the UK who works for the Iran­ian state must declare it or they will be com­mit­ting a seri­ous crim­i­nal offence,” he added. The arrests, made on May 4 in Lon­don, Rochdale, Swin­don, Man­ches­ter and Stock­port, involved five men held under the Ter­ror­ism Act 2006 and three more under the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act. Four remain in cus­tody. Author­i­ties believe the group was only hours away from attack­ing a spe­cif­ic location.

Read more: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202505066658

Key Points

• Black­list­ing Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards is being urged after five Iran­ian nation­als were arrest­ed on ter­ror charges in the UK.

• UK Secu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Dan Jarvis con­firmed these were the first arrests of Iran­ian nation­als under the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act.

• MPs crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment for not yet pro­scrib­ing the IRGC, despite repeat­ed plots linked to Iran since 2022.

• A legal review on pro­scrib­ing the IRGC as a ter­ror group is com­plete, with min­is­ters promis­ing to act on its find­ings soon.

Iranian Influence in the West: Digital Campaigns, Cyber Operations, and Policy Pushback

In recent years, a surge in Iran­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions across the West has been doc­u­ment­ed by the GIOR, with Iran ramp­ing up dig­i­tal influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing glob­al audi­ences through coor­di­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns that exploit online plat­forms and West­ern media. Notably, Iran­ian regime hack­ers have launched influ­ence cam­paigns to dis­rupt Iran oppo­si­tion ral­lies, using cyber­at­tacks and infor­ma­tion war­fare to under­mine dis­si­dent activ­i­ties abroad. The expo­sure of Iran­ian state-linked hack­ing groups involved in glob­al phish­ing attacks demon­strates how the IRGC lever­ages cyber units for espi­onage and influ­ence, tar­get­ing activists, aca­d­e­mics, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers. These efforts are mir­rored in West­ern edu­ca­tion­al spaces, as US Repub­li­cans have called for inves­ti­ga­tions into pro-Iran­ian pro­pa­gan­da on col­lege cam­pus­es, high­light­ing con­cerns about the IRGC’s cul­ti­va­tion of sym­pa­thet­ic net­works. Mean­while, Iran’s PressTV has been shown to mim­ic Russ­ian talk­ing points on Ukraine, illus­trat­ing the regime’s efforts to shape inter­na­tion­al nar­ra­tives. These find­ings are con­sis­tent with exter­nal analy­ses, which reveal that the IRGC’s influ­ence strat­e­gy com­bines cyber oper­a­tions, media manip­u­la­tion, and the estab­lish­ment of proxy net­works in West­ern soci­eties. Numer­ous analy­ses have detailed the regime’s sophis­ti­cat­ed media influ­ence tac­tics, with oth­ers argu­ing for the urgent pro­scrip­tion of the IRGC in the UK. On 6 May 2025, the UK Secu­ri­ty Min­is­ter empha­sized in Par­lia­ment the back­drop of ris­ing Iran-backed threats, with 20 plots dis­rupt­ed since 2022. The debate also addressed calls for fur­ther mea­sures against Iran­ian state-linked enti­ties, sup­port for the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and the impor­tance of inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion and robust legal frame­works to counter evolv­ing state and ter­ror­ist threats.

Exter­nal References:

• The Islam­ic Republic’s Media Influ­ence Operations

• Why the UK Should Pro­scribe the IRGC

• Counter Ter­ror­ism Polic­ing: Arrests

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.