There are moments in politics when moral clarity is demanded, not deferred. When the world is watching young women shot in the streets, students blinded by pellets, families forced to bury their children by the roadside, one expects a British Prime Minister, any Prime Minister, to find his voice.
Yet here we are.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government has refused to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, as a terrorist organisation, despite overwhelming evidence, cross party pressure, and the plainly obvious truth that the IRGC functions as the violent enforcement arm of a theocratic regime in panic.
More than 500 people have been killed since the protests began. Demonstrators have been shot dead in the street. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Internet blackouts conceal the scale of the bloodshed. The ayatollah has ordered the IRGC to take control of the crackdown. This is not theoretical. This is happening now.
And yet Britain dithers.
The United States has not. A US State Department spokesman put it with refreshing bluntness:
“Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organisation is merely stating the obvious.”
Donald Trump designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organisation back in April 2019. He has since warned he would “get involved” if the killing continues.
Even Labour peers, hardly a cabal of right wing firebrands, have broken ranks. Lord Spellar was unequivocal:
“The IRGC are not only terrorising their own people but running a terrorist and criminal network throughout the world.”
Lord Mann said it was “essential that we signal that time is up for the IRGC”.
The Intelligence and Security Committee has already warned that Iran has been behind at least 15 attempts to kill or kidnap people in Britain. Iranian linked terror arrests have occurred on British soil. This is not a distant problem. It is here.
And yet the answer from the Starmer government, delivered by Business Secretary Peter Kyle, is that proscription is somehow inconvenient.
Kyle explained:
“Now he came back and said the idea of proscribing like we do for domestic organisations isn’t appropriate for a foreign state organisation.”
Not appropriate.
Tell that to the families of the dead. Tell it to Rubina Aminian, 23 years old, shot at close range in the back of the head. Tell it to the protesters filling Whitehall, chanting for Iranian freedom, pleading for Britain to act.
What makes this refusal all the more galling is the contrast. This is a government that appears remarkably relaxed about threatening platforms, speech, and digital infrastructure, quick to scold, regulate, or rhetorically menace X, formerly Twitter, yet curiously hesitant when confronted with an armed organisation that kills protesters, exports terror, and plots assassinations abroad.
Starmer seems far more comfortable wagging a finger at Elon Musk, or at people like you and I, for standing up for our country, than he is standing up to actual terrorists.
Indeed, Sir Keir has shown himself swift to condemn anyone on the so called right, anyone insufficiently apologetic about patriotism, border control, or national sovereignty. He has dismissed vast swathes of the public as extremists, thugs, or worse.
But when it comes to the IRGC, an organisation the US calls terrorists, that Labour peers call terrorists, that Iranian protesters know as terrorists, Starmer bends. Reviews are commissioned. Lawyers consulted. Diplomatic sensitivities fretted over.
The argument, we are told, is that proscription would end diplomatic ties with Tehran.
But as Sir Iain Duncan Smith rightly observed:
“Any claim by the Foreign Office that by not proscribing the IRGC gives them diplomatic influence is simply not borne out by events.”
This is not diplomacy. It is paralysis dressed up as prudence.
Tom Tugendhat, no stranger to the security brief, has admitted:
“My own view is that the IRGC … is a standalone organisation, so I believe we should have proscribed it.”
So what, exactly, is the hesitation?
The Labour government insists it has used sanctions “to the full extent we can”. But sanctions without moral clarity are just paperwork. The refusal to proscribe sends a signal, not to Tehran’s rulers, but to its victims, that Britain is watching, worrying, and doing very little else.
Starmer’s defenders will say this is all terribly complex. International law. State actors. Precedent. Process. But leadership is precisely about deciding when the complexity no longer excuses inaction.
Keir Starmer appears happier banning apps than banning terrorists. Quicker to criticise Musk, or patriotic dissenters, than to confront a regime that shoots its own people and plots murder abroad.
History will not be kind to such selectivity.
The question is simple, and it will not go away.
Why is this Prime Minister so eager to police speech at home, yet so reluctant to name terror for what it is abroad?
In Iran, people are dying for freedom.
In Britain, their government is still reviewing.
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