Britain should set an example to Europe by outlawing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terror group, a former senior White House security official has told the JC.

Richard Goldberg was a director at the US National Security Council under President Donald Trump, leading efforts to counter Iranian weapons of mass destruction. He urged Britain to act against the IRGC, which has already been proscribed in the US.

The JC understands that Foreign Office civil servants are resisting the proposals, which the Home Office supports. 

Mr Goldberg spoke amid mounting political pressure following the execution of British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari, the ex-deputy Iranian defence minister, who was accused of being an MI6 spy.

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A missile at an exhibition in Tehran organised by the IRGC (Getty Images)

“Iran’s supplying drones to Russia in Ukraine, the crimes committed by IRGC proxies like Hezbollah, the execution of a British citizen and the IRGC’s control of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme suggest we have come to a point of inflection,” Mr Goldberg in an interview with the JC after he gave a security briefing to MPs.

He added: “You cannot sustain the status quo. Proscribing the IRGC is simply a logical step.” Mr Goldberg said that while outlawing the IRGC was essential, there were other steps Britain should take to counter the growing threat that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons.

The senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies went on: “It may take them some time to build a weapon they could place on a missile. But they could build a device that showed they had become a nuclear power and test it very quickly, which would be incredibly destabilising.”

He said that attempts to revive the deal should be abandoned and warned that under “sunset clauses” it can already sell some weapons to other states, and would also be cleared to market drones and missiles by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Westminster sources detailed a growing disagreement between senior member of Rishi Sunak’s Government and diplomats over the issue.

They said that while Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Security Minister Tom Tugendhat are strongly in favour of proscribing the IRGC immediately, there is “pushback” from Foreign Office mandarins.

“It sometimes seems there are people in the Foreign Office who hold the Islamic Republic in some kind of esteem or they are still suffering from post-traumatic stress from when an Iranian mob attacked our Tehran embassy in 2011,” one source said.

Many senior MPs strongly support designating the IRGC as a terror group.

They include Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP who chairs the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, who said the execution of Mr Akbari may be behind the government’s reluctance to endorse the move.

The killing led Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper to back designation because they said, the IRGC was “barbaric“ and “posed a growing threat” inside Britain.

Tory MP Bob Blackman, who called a parliamentary debate on the IRGC last week, told the JC: “The risk to dual nationals is real. We must keep the pressure up”.