Labour ministers are today resisting US demands to label the paramilitary wing of Iran‘s Islamist regime a ‘terrorist organisation’ despite bodies piling up across the country.
Donald Trump‘s State Department last night told the UK that labelling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp in this way was ‘merely stating the obvious’ with Tehran now ‘the world’s leading state sponsor of terror’.
A spokesman said Britain should add to the international pressure on the regime as protests in Iran against the 46-year-old authoritarian government met with a bloody response.
However Cabinet Minister Peter Kyle this morning would not be drawn on whether the UK would take such a step.
He said the UK ‘already used the sanctions against Iran to the full extent we can,’ and suggested that labelling the IRGC as a terrorist organisation was not ‘appropriate’.
Thousands took to the streets of London on Sunday as protests against the Iranian regime and the brutal crackdown by its security forces spread around the world.
Activists now say that the death toll from the brutal suppression of nationwide demonstrations in the Middle Eastern nation is at least 538 people.
Meanwhile more than 10,600 people have been detained, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has claimed.
Donald Trump’s State Department last night told the UK that labelling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp in this way was ‘merely stating the obvious’ with Tehran now ‘the world’s leading state sponsor of terror’.
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However Cabinet Minister Peter Kyle this morning would not be drawn on whether the UK would take such a step.
Activists now say that the death toll from the brutal suppression of nationwide demonstrations in the Middle Eastern nation is at least 538 people.
Mr Kyle, the Business Secretary, told Times Radio the Government was ‘looking very closely about how we can support people in Iran’.
He said: ‘A state has a duty to protect people who are protesting. The right to protest of course is a fundamental right and we are all thinking very, very deeply about those people affected in Iran by the response of the Iranian government.’
‘They must allow the space for protest to unfold,’ he added.
Asked whether Britain would be prepared to offer help with communications amid an internet blackout in the country, he said: ‘We don’t comment on security matters, we don’t comment on live issues where we may or may not be using those sorts of powers.’
He said the Government is already sanctioning Iran and the Iranian security services and has been ‘really careful to be as strident as we possibly can in support of Iranian people who want change in Iran.’
His response came after the State department told the Telegraph: ‘Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and has yet again turned that terror on its own people,’ a state department spokesman told The Telegraph.
‘Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organisation is merely stating the obvious.
‘We encourage all partners to join us and to add pressure on Iran at this critical moment for the Iranian people.’
However former MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore said that UK terror law was not designed for state-affiliated groups.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I would just caution that it won’t have practical effect.
‘It has symbolic impact but the danger is that something like that is more about us feeling better about ourselves, it’s not actually something that will have an impact on the IRGC precisely because that instrument is designed for non-state terrorist groups, not for parts of the state.
‘The IRGC is a very bad organisation that does very bad things, it is just whether that is the right instrument to try to tackle it with.’
