Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will respond to EDM 483, role of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Government is deeply concerned by Iran’s destabilising involvement in regional conflicts, including in Syria and Yemen, through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and IRGC Qods Force, and by reported financial and military support to militant and proscribed groups, such as Hizballah, Hamas and Palestinian rejectionist groups, and the Houthis in Yemen. We are also seriously concerned by Iran’s ballistic missile programme. I raised these concerns directly during my visit to Iran in August 2017, as did the Foreign Secretary in December 2017. I also raised the UK’s serious concerns about the human rights situation in Iran. The September 2017 report of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran sets out the role of the IRGC in human rights violations in Iran – in particular in the harassment and detention of minority groups. The UK has shown its leadership in co-sponsoring the UN General Assembly’s Resolution on the Human Rights Situation in Iran in November 2017. The IRGC as a whole remains subject to EU and US sanctions; a large number of associated individuals and entities are also designated. We continue to review the list of proscribed groups, but do not routinely comment on consideration of specific organisations.