Sharon Hodgson
Main Page: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South) Countering Iran’s Hostile Activities
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Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Henderson. I will start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this important debate. They both gave very powerful opening speeches.
Very often, when the case is made for why the IRGC must be proscribed, we focus on the havoc it has wreaked across the middle east in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere. That is particularly understandable in light of the events of the last few months, as Gaza, Israel and southern Lebanon have become the scene of death and destruction, in large part due to Iran and its proxies. The case for proscribing the IRGC as a terror group is made plain by its support for terror groups across the middle east. However, it also poses a growing threat to us here in the UK, as we heard in the opening speeches—a threat that transforms proscription into an urgent policy need to undermine terrorist and extremist activity in our own country.
In recent years, the Iranian regime has increasingly exploited the free and open society we all seek to defend here in the UK in order to pursue its own ends. Matt Jukes, the head of counter-terror policing, has made it clear that no fewer than 15 Iranian plots to kill or kidnap people on British soil have been uncovered in just the past two years. Meanwhile, MI5 has reported that Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services”, including the IRGC, have
“ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime.”
Again and again, the Foreign Secretary and his predecessors have made formal representations to the Iranian regime that that behaviour is unacceptable, but again and again, that has not worked, and the IRGC continues to operate in our country.
Last February, the opposition news network, Iran International, was temporarily forced to relocate its headquarters from London to Washington—that is not Washington in my constituency, just for clarity—in response to threats from the Iranian Government against journalists based in our country. Scotland Yard was shamefully forced to warn staff that it could not safeguard them from Tehran-backed assassins or kidnappers on UK soil. As recently as March this year, the Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati, who works for Iran International, was stabbed by three men on a residential street in Wimbledon.
Equally troubling is the fact that the IRGC and other Iranian agents are known to exercise soft power on behalf of the Iranian regime. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking mentioned, the Charity Commission has in recent years investigated the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, giving it an official warning in 2022. That followed two events held at the charity’s premises in 2020 that eulogised Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was subject to UK sanctions, and that may have placed individuals present in breach of the Terrorism Act. We have also seen reports of IRGC commanders speaking to British students to encourage and incite antisemitic attacks. At least eight IRGC leaders have addressed British student audiences since early 2020. One commander who spoke said the holocaust was “fake”, boasted of training al-Qaeda terrorists and urged his audience to join
“the beautiful list of soldiers”
who would fight and kill Jews in the incoming apocalyptic war. Another IRGC commander invited to speak by the Islamic Students Association of Britain claimed Jews “created homosexuality” and that students should see themselves as “holy warriors”, promising that the “era of the Jews” would soon be at an end.
Just this year, a BBC report on the same organisation found that a former IRGC commander, Ezzatollah Zarghami, had spoken to students. He is reported to have previously
“boasted of training Hamas in Gaza prior to the 7 October attacks”,
and in an interview on Iranian state TV, he described how
“he had provided Hamas with missiles.”
Evidence of the IRGC’s support for terrorism across the middle east is abundant and undisputed. Indeed, it has been painfully clear since 7 October. Now we have growing evidence of the IRGC operating in our own country, under the Government’s nose and seemingly at will. Today, the IRGC is a source, supporter and funder of terrorism, not just in Gaza and Beirut but increasingly in our very own Wimbledon and Maida Vale. If the Government have a strategy intended to deter that activity, it is just not working. We have had years of the Government refusing to proscribe the IRGC for one reason or another. However, it is increasingly clear to everyone else what needs to happen.
If it looks like a terrorist organisation, acts like a terrorist organisation and operates like a terrorist organisation, it is hard to understand why the Government, in the words of the current Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), on 23 March 2024—indeed, I think all Ministers use the same quote—
“do not routinely comment on whether an organisation is or is not being considered for proscription.”
Thankfully, we in the Labour party—I hope I hear this from my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) on the Front Bench—are a Government in waiting and we stand ready to do what this Government seemingly will not do, which is to finally proscribe the IRGC.