Three quarters of Labour voters view the IRGC as a threat to Britain’s national security.
Two thirds (67 percent) of the British public approves of the UK cutting ties with Iran, with this figure rising to 72 per cent for Labour voters, the survey of more than 1,500 adults found.
More than half (51 per cent) of the British public believes current sanctions have proven insufficient to stop the IRGC’s threat in the UK, according to the polling, conducted by marker research firm JL Partners.
Some 46 per cent said they did not have confidence that authorities in the UK were doing enough to detect and counter IRGC-linked activities, and two thirds of the public (65 per cent) backed the proscription of the IRGC.
The release of the findings coincided with Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying that his country’s domestic spy agency had gathered “credible intelligence” that attacks against a Melbourne synagogue and a Jewish restaurant in Sydney were “directed by the IRGC”.
Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, will be expelled, and Australia’s embassy in Tehran will suspend operations.
Australia’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group follows similar moves by Canada and the US. Both the EU and the UK have signalled their intention to proscribe the IRGC, but have yet to do so.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that his government will proscribed the IRGC (Image: Getty)AFP via Getty Images
UK security services and police have foiled at least 20 Iran-linked assassination and kidnap plots in the UK in the past two years, according to MI5.
Labour Friends of Israel chair Jon Pearce, who was elected as the MP for High Peak in Derbyshire last year, told The Daily Telegraph that he would support tougher measures against the group.
“The British public are rightly under no illusions about the nature of the Iranian regime. It is clearer than ever that the IRGC poses a threat to the safety and security of everyone in Britain,” Pearce said.
He urged the government “to bring forward legislation to ban Tehran’s terror army as swiftly as possible”, adding that the latest polling shows this would have the “overwhelming support of Labour voters”.
The Iranian Front was founded by political activist and journalist Vahid Beheshti, who has staged a protest against the Iranian regime outside the Foreign Office for more than 900 days.
Beheshti said: “As the largest state sponsor of terrorism and antisemitism, the IRGC and the Islamic Republic of Iran pose an existential threat that impacts not only the people of Iran, but the Jewish community across the globe, and in particular, the national security in Israel. This threat far exceeds the geographical borders of the Middle East as we are witnessing the impacts of this destructive ideology here in the West.
“The UK population are obviously well aware of this, which is apparent from the results of this poll commissioned by Iran Front. Sir Keir Starmer has a moral duty to not only uphold his own pledges to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, he now has concrete data collected from the British public and Labour voters, that proscription is indeed a national demand that can no longer be ignored.”
In opposition, the Labour Party suggested that banning the IRGC would be a priority if elected. In January 2023, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper, the then shadow foreign and home secretaries, said the group was “behaving like a terrorist organisation and must now be proscribed as such”.
