"It will be a bit of a joke if the UK proscribes the IRGC once the regime has toppled," Barak Seener, Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and founder of the Gulf Futures Forum, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The Labour government has been reticent to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization, preferring instead to impose sanctions on related individuals. This comes despite Labour’s election manifesto explicitly referring to the threat posed by the IRGC and stressing the desire to ban it.
However, on 13 January, the Business Secretary Peter Kyle confirmed the UK will not proscribe the IRGC, noting that the government “did a review and asked the independent reviewer into terrorism laws last summer to look into this. He came back and said the idea of proscribing – as we do for domestic terror organizations – isn’t appropriate for a foreign state organization."
“We’ve already used sanctions against Iran to the full extent we can," he added.
Nevertheless, given the ongoing US-Israel military action against Iran, the UK may be reassessing this.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis hinted on Wednesday that the Government could soon put forward a new law that enables proscription, announcing: “We are also working on new powers to counter foreign interference, including a proscription-style tool to disrupt proxy organisations undermining our security.”
However, Seener told the Post that the UK is "woefully behind" in increasing its defence expenditure and rearming for the looming Russian threat to Europe. "In turn, you're seeing that the UK is not functioning like a state that has a sense of national interest and its security; it's behaving like a grassroots NGO that is catering towards its constituents."
"By not proscribing the IRGC, the UK is not advancing its domestic national security interests," he added.
Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, revealed in October 2025 that the agency had thwarted more than 20 potentially lethal Iranian plots.
IRGC poses security threat for UK
While the UK has been worrying about proscription preventing diplomatic engagement with the Iranian regime, the IRGC and its agents have been inciting radicalisation within the UK, tapping into criminal gangs to conduct surveillance, and intimidating opponents of the Iranian regime. The IRGC has even conducted assassination plots on UK soil. In January 2024, the IRGC sought to assassinate two British-Iranian journalists working at Iran International, an opposition media outlet. As a result, the IRGC poses a security risk.
"You're only seeing the UK attempt to play catch-up with the US. So it didn't initially allow the US usage of its air bases in Cyprus. It will also perhaps play catch-up with the US in prescribing the IRGC. And it will just be a bit of a joke if the UK prescribes the IRGC once the regime has toppled and it's too late and irrelevant," he said.
In Seener's April 2025 report - 'The Long Arm of Tehran: Why the UK should ban the IRGC' - he encouraged the UK Government to align its foreign policy with its domestic security interests by banning the IRGC.
Seener explained that this would not only enhance British national security but also position it as a reliable ally to the US.
Furthermore, the IRGC has already been proscribed in its entirety as a terrorist organisation by Sweden, the US, Canada, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and the UK Government is falling behind.
As Seener pointed out, should the UK Government proscribe the IRGC, it would (either directly or indirectly) also proscribe affiliated organisations and terror groups: not only Hamas and Hezbollah, which are already proscribed, but also the Houthis and any other Iraqi, Pakistani, Afghani, Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian militias that have been trained, funded or include personnel from the IRGC.
In other words, proscribing the IRGC would lead to the proscribing of any and all affiliated terror groups/proxies in the Middle East, Seener said, adding that applying the Terrorism Act 2000 to the IRGC would "empower UK authorities to curb support for the IRGC in the UK and support for the principles of the Islamic revolution which the Iranian regime exports via foreign organisations."
It would also make it easier to counter support for the Iranian regime within Shiite communities in the UK.
"When it comes to the Islamic Republic’s terror, it is time for the UK to uphold the same stringent standards; it is nothing less than a matter of national security," he concluded.