The United Kingdom has taken decisive action by banning Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and enacting sweeping new powers to combat foreign-backed sabotage, directly attributing a series of antisemitic arson attacks on British Jewish sites to an Iran-linked proxy group, the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right (IMCR). British officials revealed that IMCR publicly claimed responsibility for seven attacks this year targeting Jewish and Israeli-linked locations, as well as a Persian-language media outlet critical of Iran’s government, with intelligence suggesting that members of the IRGC’s elite Qods Force were “almost certainly” directing these operations across Europe, including fires at synagogues and Jewish community sites in London. Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that these new measures, which could lead to life imprisonment for those carrying out sabotage on behalf of the IRGC, IMCR, or Russia’s GRU Volunteer Corps, send an unequivocal message to foreign adversaries that Britain will not tolerate states sowing fear and division on its streets. The government, under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, will now have enhanced capabilities to prosecute individuals acting as proxies for hostile states like Iran and Russia, who Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood accused of using “proxies and thugs to do their dirty work on our shores.” This crackdown follows a pattern of Iran-backed groups recruiting from criminal organizations to conduct sabotage and intimidation across Europe, with MI5 identifying at least 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in Britain over the past year, underscoring the escalating threat and the UK’s commitment to protecting its Jewish communities and national security.
Adapted from: Latest World News on Fox News
