Latest news with #IslamicRevolutionaryGuard
Shafaq News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
Iran vows 'strong response' to any attack
Shafaq News/ On Sunday, the Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hossein Salami, declared that despite facing a formidable global coalition of adversaries, Iran continues to enjoy internal peace and stability. Speaking at a ceremony honoring veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, Salami reaffirmed the IRGC's 'unwavering stance', stating, 'The Revolutionary Guard will stand powerfully against the enemies.' Earlier, Iran's military warned that any threat or act of aggression would be met with a decisive response. 'We will not allow the enemy's illusions to materialize,' the army stressed in a statement, emphasizing the full preparedness of Iran's armed forces to defend the nation's territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national security. The remarks come amid growing tensions, fueled by reports of Israeli preparations for a swift strike on Iran's nuclear facilities should US-Iran nuclear negotiations collapse.
Reuters
21-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US says more construction materials fall under Iran sanctions
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) - People or entities that provide Iran with certain construction-related materials will face sanctions after the Trump administration said it found more materials were being used as part of Tehran's nuclear, ballistic or military programs. In a statement, the U.S. Department of State said on Wednesday it had found Iran's construction sector was controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that it had identified another 10 strategic materials now subject to U.S. sanctions. "With these determinations, the United States has broader sanctions authorities to prevent Iran from acquiring strategic materials for its construction sector under IRGC control and its proliferation programs," it said in a statement. The 10 materials include austenitic nickel-chromium alloy, magnesium ingots, sodium perchlorate, tungsten copper and certain aluminum sheets and tubes, among others, it said.
Bloomberg
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
UK Plans New Powers to Tackle Rise in Iran-Backed Threats
Britain plans to strengthen its ability to crack down on state-backed terrorist threats following an increase in security incidents involving Iranian nationals in the UK, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Monday. Addressing parliament, Cooper said the Islamic Republic 'poses an unacceptable threat to our domestic security that cannot continue,' citing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the most powerful unit of Iran's military — as an ongoing and particular source of concern.
The National
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
UK police question Iranian terror suspects as officials consider IRGC ban
British officials will shortly announce a decision on proscribing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as English police are given more time to question Iranians arrested on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism. Britain's Security Minister Dan Jarvis has revealed that the findings of a review by Jonathan Hall, the government's security adviser, on how to take action against Iran would be published soon. In a statement to the House of Commons on the arrests of May 3 and 4, Mr Jarvis said the threats were among the most complex the police have tackled. 'The two operations that took place across multiple locations this weekend were significant and complex,' he said. 'They were some of the largest counter-state threats and counter-terrorism actions that we have seen in recent times.' A total of eight men, seven of whom are Iranian, were detained in two operations over the holiday weekend. Five of the arrests were part of an operation against an alleged plot to 'target specific premises'. Two men aged 29 were detained in Swindon in Wiltshire and Stockport in Cheshire, a 40-year-old was held in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, a 46-year-old in West London and a 24-year-old was detained in the city of Manchester. The warrants mean the suspects can be held and questioned until Saturday May 10. At that point they can be charged, released or the police can hold them until two weeks after they were arrested. A fifth man has now been released on bail until later this month. Social media video of the operations purported to show armed police surrounding and entering a house in a council estate. A man was removed and the house remained cordoned off on Sunday when forensic investigations began. Although the police have yet to confirm whether or not the foiled operations were backed by the Iranian state, last weekend's arrests have intensified calls to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Mr Hall, the UK's counter-terrorism and foreign state influence laws adviser, is conducting a review for the government on the IRGC's activities. Mr Jarvis said Mr Hall had been asked by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to review how counter terrorism measures 'could be applied to modern day state threats, such as those from Iran'. 'The Home Secretary specifically asked the reviewer to look at a state threats proscription tool so we are not held back in limitations in applying counter-terrorism legislation to state threats,' Mr Jarvis added in his update. 'Jonathan Hall has now completed his review and will publish it shortly and the government will not hesitate to take action in response to Mr Hall's advice.' For years, the UK sought to strike a 'balance' of imposing sanctions on Iran, but stopped short of proscription to keep diplomatic channels open, according to Nicholas Hopton, who served as the UK's ambassador to Iran and now runs the Middle East Association. But the UK is likely to wait for a new US nuclear deal with Tehran to go through before it reviews its options on Iran. Talks between Tehran and Washington began in April, with US President Donald Trump seeking to renegotiate the terms of a deal signed between the US, Iran and other European partners in 2015. 'The UK government would probably want to see the deal succeed thereby stopping Iran from militarising its nuclear capability,' Mr Hopton told The National. 'It might decide to see where the nuclear negotiations lead to before reconsidering its options on Iran' The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was first negotiated under US president Barack Obama and involved 15-year restrictions to Iran's nuclear weapons programme in exchange for sanctions relief. Mr Trump withdrew from the deal during his first term, pursuing instead a campaign of 'maximum pressure' and criticising the deal for overlooking Tehran's growing ballistic missiles programme or its use of regional armed proxies. Yet the terms of the new deal appear to be narrowed down again to the nuclear issue. The JCPOA's sunset clauses, which come up later this year, are likely to get both sides moving quickly on a deal, despite the public standoffs. 'That imposes a pressure on both sides to move towards a deal,' Mr Hopton said. Ken McCallum, the head of the MI5 security service, has said repeatedly of plots emanating from the Iranian state, led by the IRGC and the Ministry of State Security. The 20 potentially lethal plots tracked by the UK were described last year by officials as developing at an unprecedented pace and scale. The Iranian activities in the UK have both increased and broadened in focus. Yet the UK's embassy in Tehran has been a 'valuable' asset in dealing with issues such as Britons who have been illegally detained by the Iranian regime, Mr Hopton said. 'If you proscribe the IRGC there would be an increased possibility that diplomatic relations and the UK's scope for engaging and influencing the regime would be damaged or even severed,' he said. One of the Iranians arrested has close connections to the regime in Tehran and is from a family which runs prominent businesses, according to the Telegraph. The use of Iranian nationals in an alleged terrorist plot may represent a change in tactics from Tehran's preference of hiring criminals. Details of the premises raided have not been revealed but it is believed to have been used by an Iranian opposition group. Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'Our officers and staff are progressing what is a significant and highly complex investigation, and we still have searches and activity under way at multiple addresses across the country. 'We believe that a specific premises was the target of this suspected plot and counter terrorism policing officers remain in close contact. 'The investigation is still in its early stages and we are exploring various lines of inquiry to establish any potential motivation as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public linked to this matter.' The majority of threats from Iran have been focused on dissidents and other Iranian-linked targets who 'don't toe the line' by curtailing their activities. A series of centres of Iranian activity in the UK have come under scrutiny from both the security services and the Charities Commissioner regulations. The Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale in London has been subjects to a warning from the commission since 2020 but there have been no findings that would lead to its closure. In that year, it held commemorations after the assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, who was killed in a US strike near Baghdad airport. Its director Seyed Hashem Moosavi was the acknowledged representative of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the UK and stepped down from his role there in 2022. The centre maintains that it serves the community in West London and is not linked to Iran. In 2023, an Austrian was convicted of carrying out 'hostile reconnaissance' against the London headquarters of Iran International, a broadcaster which is critical of Iran's government. The following year, a British-based journalist of Iranian origin who worked for Iran International was stabbed in London. This year, the government placed Iran on the highest tier of the new foreign influence register, requiring it to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK.
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
The sinister reach of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard: Calls for UK to ban Iranian military wing as a terror group - as fears rise over Tehran-backed cells after latest arrests
Whitehall is today facing mounting pressure to take action against Iran's sinister Islamic Revolutionary Guard amid fears it backed a foiled terror attack against Britain. Since 2022, UK counter-terrorism police have identified more than 20 credible Iranian threats to kill or kidnap people in the UK. Over the weekend, counter-terror cops and MI5 are believed to have been joined by members of the British special forces to carry out a string of busts targeting alleged members of a suspected terror cell. Armed officers swooped across parts of Manchester, London and Swindon as part of a co-ordinated series of high-octane raids. It's not clear who was behind the alleged terror plot foiled over the weekend, which insiders say was just hours away from being launched. However, experts suggest it bears the hallmark of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran 's international brigade of terror – specifically, the branch tasked with its foreign operations, the Quds Force. The IRGC is a violent, Islamist-extremist organisation that was founded by acolytes of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to defend the Islamic Republic of Iran's core values. It uses a mix of terror, extreme violence and ideological warfare to safeguard the Islamic Republic's revolution and target its enemies. It's been linked to kidnaps, assassinations and terror attacks. Back in his November 2022 annual threat update, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum assessed there was a severe threat from Iran's 'aggressive intelligence services' to kidnap or kill UK-based people. He was talking about the IRGC. Just a few months later, on January 12 2023, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion calling on the UK government to finally proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Yet that Commons motion was not binding and so the IRGC remains unproscribed, not only in the UK but, staggeringly, across Europe. Ali Ansari, professor in modern history at the University of St Andrews, told the Mail: 'Saturday's arrests are a very worrying development and a clear sign that Iran's threat to UK citizens is more than rhetorical.' In March of last year, Iranian-British journalist Pouria Zeraati was stabbed four times outside his Wimbledon home. The attack was allegedly carried out by Eastern European gangsters hired by the Iranians - who were able to flee the country just hours later. Only a few months earlier, Britain imposed new sanctions on members of an IRGC unit that had tried to assassinate two presenters of Iran International, a UK-based TV channel that is critical of the Tehran regime. Even after those sinister incidents, the then Tory government refused to act. Foreign secretary David Cameron opined that banning the IRGC was not in the UK interests. The Islamic Republic is ideologically geared to oppose the West and to export its Shia Revolution – and what makes the IRGC such a threat is that it wages both military and political warfare. Last November, sources revealed to the Mail how the German-Iranian leader of a Hells Angels biker gang had allegedly been recruited by Iran to carry out terror attacks. Ramin Yektaparast, a brutal thug and unashamed anti-Semite with a tattoo of Adolf Hitler on his arm, is suspected of numerous crimes, including planning attacks on synagogues in Germany in November 2022. The raids reportedly saw shots being fired and a Molotov cocktail thrown at synagogues in the cities of Essen and Bochum. Western intelligence sources have reportedly grilled Yektaparast in Iran over his alleged links to the Iranian regime. Sources revealed to the Mail last year that during his covert interrogation with intelligence officers, he described the history of his ties with Quds Force - the foreign operations branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He provided details of his handlers and of the targets. The accurate information he relayed facilitated the disruption of several terror attacks in Europe.' Yektaparast was the brain and brawn behind two terror attacks mounted by the Quds Force in Germany in 2022, as well as dozens of other foiled attacks in Europe. He fled to Iran before he was due to stand trial in 2021 for the murder and dismemberment of another biker gang member in 2014. He was later assassinated by Israel's elite Mossad special operations group last year. However, before his death, the Quds Force had approached him due to 'his reputation as a cruel gang leader with an extensive network of ties in Europe'. The Iranians liked this thug's willingness to 'mount any type of terror attack that Quds Force asked of him'. He was passed onto Quds Force Unit 840, described to me as the regime's 'terror export' unit. Yektaparast knew criminals in about 50 countries, many of them Mafia members. In 2023, he had begun working with gangs in Morocco and Poland as well as bringing members of these gangs to Iran. Most Mafia members have no ideology beyond making money, Yektaparast explained to his questioners in Iran. But the German and Polish mafia are different: they're raised to hate Jews. He knew the Quds Force had flagged him as a good candidate for recruitment due to his openly anti-Semitic beliefs. His handlers were keen to exploit those ugly convictions and 'presented their anti-Semitic stances to him, noting that the Jews are the cause of all his troubles'. From there, it was a rapid immersion into the world of the Quds Force, which quickly began to shower him with money. On several occasions, Yektaparast was paid with dollar-stuffed suitcases: for the German synagogue attacks he received $5 million. Contact was regular, and in multiple locations, including at the Quds Force's HQ in the Afsariyeh neighbourhood of south-east Tehran, as well as in restaurants, cars and elsewhere. He began working with their operatives – these ranged from soldiers and killers of ruthless efficacy to Hamid, a 'short fat bully' responsible for arranging the entry and exit of assets to and from Iran. Among Yektaparast's key contacts was a man named 'Sayeed' (in reality Mohsen Bozorgi from Unit 840). Through him, Yektaparast began to understand how the Quds Force worked. Yektaparast was not always impressed with the Quds Force. He believed most of the terror activities abroad were carried out not by Quds Force operatives but by paid agents like him. He had links to criminals across the world. However, Yektaparast was assassinated in Iran after fleeing from Germany As well as being linked to alleged terror plots, Iranian forces have also tried to recruit spies in the British military. Among them includes Daniel Khalife - a 'hapless' young soldier who was jailed in February for 14 years and three months for espionage. The 23-year-old was caught spying for Iran before then fleeing prison by clinging to the bottom of a food truck - before again being caught by the authorities. He claimed to have been on a one-man 'double agent' mission but was labelled an 'attention seeker' by a judge when he was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court in London. Judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Khalife - who was ignored when he contacted MI6 and MI5 in his attempts to become a double agent - had been motivated by 'a selfish desire to show off' and described him as 'a dangerous fool'. While acting as a spy, Khalife 'exposed military personnel to serious harm' by collecting sensitive information and passing it to agents of Iran. He was paid in cash and told handlers he would stay in the military for 25-plus years for them. In September 2023, Khalife escaped from category B prison HMP Wandsworth in South West London by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck. He was caught on a canal towpath by a plainclothes detective days later after a major search. Prosecutors in his trial said Khalife played 'a cynical game', claiming he wanted a career as a double agent to help the British intelligence services, when in fact he gathered 'a very large body of restricted and classified material'. Khalife was sentenced to six years for committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, and another six years - consisting of five years in prison and one on licence - for eliciting information about members of the armed forces. The judge also passed a sentence of two years and three months for the jail break. Last November, jurors at Woolwich Crown Court found that Khalife had breached the Official Secrets Act and the Terrorism Act. He was cleared of carrying out a bomb hoax and had already admitted during his trial to escaping from Wandsworth prison. But it's not just military personnel allegedly in the sights of Iranian spies - British Muslims and Jewish civilians are also being recruited, intelligence sources have claimed. Recruiters from the feared IRGC approach British Shias visiting religious sites in Iran and Iraq. They are told to return to the UK and gather information on prominent British Jews or targets such as synagogues, Israeli and British officials have separately told the Mail. Some spy on British-based Iranian dissidents, whom the Tehran regime accuses of fomenting unrest back home. Last year, an Israeli official said that since Hamas's October 7 massacre, they had given a higher-than-usual number of warnings to the UK, alerting this country to potential attacks by Iranians or their proxies. A source said: 'We do not know the scale of Iranian agents inside Europe and the UK , but all it takes is for one to slip through the net.' Experts have also warned that some Iranians who come to study at British universities as international students on state scholarships are also spies. Kasra Aarabi, of the United Against Nuclear Iran think-tank, said IRGC recruiters did not focus on hiring British Iranians, who are usually secular and oppose the Ayatollah regime. But British Shias who originated from Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon were targeted at the Arbaeen festival in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, which attracts up to 20 million pilgrims a year. Most British Muslims belong to the Sunni sect of Islam. But it is estimated there are up to 400,000 Muslims who belong to the Shia sect, which is the state religion of Iran and sees itself as the protector of Shias across the world. A Whitehall source said when the IRGC wanted to assassinate or kidnap anyone on UK soil, it often used British-based organised criminal networks. But information gathered by British spies may be used to carry out the attacks, one source said, adding: 'The reason why the IRGC uses organised criminal networks to carry out the work here is because thankfully it is very difficult for Iranian spies to operate on British soil.' The Ayatollah regime has targeted Iran International – a Farsi-language channel based in Chiswick, west London – accusing it of fomenting protests and demonstrations at home, especially after the death of student Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Ms Amini was violently assaulted by the country's morality police for not wearing her headscarf correctly, and later died in hospital, sparking protests across the globe. A British-based people smuggler-turned-informant was paid almost £200,000 by the IRGC to assassinate two British journalists who worked for the channel. The Government has sanctioned five individuals linked to the attempted assassinations. In December, Chechen criminal Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, 31, was jailed for three years after being found guilty of spying on the headquarters of Iran International in order to carry out a terror attack. Counter-terrorism police said Dovtaev belonged to a European organised criminal network which was hired to carry out the attack.. MI5 and counter-terror police say that since the start of 2022, the Iranian regime has tried to kill or harm at least 15 British-based Iranian dissidents, sometimes publicly calling for their murders. And the IRGC has also been accused of sending an Iranian couple to Sweden in 2015, using the cover of Afghan asylum seekers. The couple lived in the country as a 'sleeper cell' until 2021 when they were activated to apparently assassinate three prominent Jews. But they were arrested by security services. Last year, it was reported that the Islamic College, a Shia educational institution based in Willesden Green, north-west London, had strong links to the Al-Mustafa University in Iran and sent students to its campus in the country. Islamic College principal Dr Isa Jahangir was reported as the 'representative' of Al-Mustafa in the UK on pro-Iranian news websites. Al-Mustafa was sanctioned by the US Treasury for being a recruiting ground for the IRGC. The college said at the time that claims of its links and that of Dr Jahangir to Al-Mustafa were 'unfounded'. Terorism expert Professor Anthony Glees said: 'This is a serious threat that needs to be addressed. IRGC is behind Hamas and the Houthis, and it is also running these spying networks here. British Iranians need to be very careful when they go back to Iran.' The Home Office has previously said: 'The UK will always stand up to threats from foreign nations. We continually assess potential threats.'
