Minister suggests that Iran’s IRGC could be proscribed after law change

HOME Office minister Alex Norris has said that the government is plugging a gap in the law that prevents Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from being proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

He told GB News: “Well, we already have sanctioned 550 people with connection to the IRGC. We’re very clear we want to see an end to the violence. We want to see people’s human rights upheld. We are very concerned, as you would imagine, with supporting and protecting British citizens in Iran.

“These are all points that the Foreign Secretary has made with her Iranian counterpart yesterday, and we will keep pushing because it’s important that Britain plays its role on the global stage.

“We, as I say, have made the sanctions that we’ve made. Similarly, we’ve put Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign interference scheme as well.

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“There is a gap in the law that we inherited from our predecessors. That means that we can’t currently prescribe state actors in the way that you suggest. We are changing that, and that would give us the space.

“I can’t give a running commentary on where, who may or may not be proscribed, because there’s publicly available information, as you’d expect, but also in matters of national security, which might not be publicly available, but nevertheless, we’re changing the proscription regime to make sure that state actors are covered.”

Asked how regime members can be stopped from moving money into the UK, he said: “We’ve already put ourselves in that position by the sanctions that we’ve made. We take the actions that people could do around the world, very seriously, and if there is a domestic context in terms of their assets or their travel, we take strong action.

“We’ve done so in this case, I think people, I hope people would be reassured by that. In the meantime, our interests now are using our diplomatic heft to make sure that the violence is stopped, that people’s human rights are upheld and that we are supporting our British citizens.”

On the controversy over the construction of a super embassy by China in London, he said: “This is a quasi-judicial process. The process is not finished yet.

“It ends with the Secretary of State for Housing and Planning, Steve Reed will make a final determination based on all the information, based on the plans, based on information submitted by many parties, including ourselves in the Home Office, based on local representations, based on the facts.

“We need to let him have the space to make that judgment, which he’ll make when he’s able to.”