Government announces sanctions against Iranian businessman who financed IRGC

"Its use of repression and targeted threats to carry out hostile acts, including here in the UK, is completely unacceptable. We will continue to take action to call out and tackle such behaviour.

“Today we are announcing sanctions against corrupt Iranian banker and businessman Aliakbar Ansari for his role in financially supporting the activities of the IRGC.

The minister added that the sanctioning of Ansari “sends a clear message” to the Iranian regime.

“We will not tolerate threats from the IRGC and will not hesitate to take the most effective measures against them.”

Despite Labour pledging to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation in opposition, it is yet to do so in government.

The government has, however, said that it would draw up “new powers modelled on counter terrorism powers in a series of areas to tackle these state threats”, following a recommendation by Jonathan Hall, its independent reviewer of terrorism legislation

In May, Hall advised that the government create the ability to “issue statutory alert and liability threat notices against foreign intelligence services, an equivalent to proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000”, which he said would be “available for use against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”.

In an interview with the JC in July, Lord Beamish, chair of Parliament’s powerful Intelligence and Security Committee urged the government to proscribe the IRGC.

In August this year, Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador and announced its intention to designate the IRGC a terrorist organisation, as it is in both the US and Canada.