MPs, including a former home secretary, have told the JC that the sentencing of Daniel Khalife on Monday – for spying and escaping prison – show the need to take the threat posed by Iran to the UK seriously.
The 23-year-old former soldier escaped from HMP Wandsworth in south-west London in September 2023 by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck, sparking a city-wide manhunt.
Khalife, who served as a lance corporal in the Royal Signals, "exposed military personnel to serious harm" as he received cash from his Iranian handlers in exchange for information.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, who sentenced Khalife to 14 years and three months behind bars, described him as a “dangerous fool” motivated by a “a selfish desire to show off”.
She added: “That you thought it was appropriate to insert yourself – an unauthorised, unqualified and uninformed junior soldier – into communication with an enemy state is perhaps the clearest indication of the degree of folly in your failure to understand at the most obvious level the risk you posed."
In the wake of the case, several MPs have told the JC that it has only reinforced the need for authorities to be alert to the threat posed by Iran and called on the government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), following in the footsteps of allies like the US and Canada
The organisation has been linked to assassination plots, cyberattacks, and covert operations targeting dissidents and civilians across Europe and North America. Including, reportedly, an attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
Former home secretary and chair of Conservative Friends of Israel Suella Braverman said: “This serious case shows exactly why we must follow our allies and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps must be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
“They pose a significant terror threat to the British public, the Iranian diaspora and our Jewish community.”
She added: “Labour promised to do this when in opposition and must be true to their word.”
In February 2023 then-Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament: “We would proscribe the IRGC, either by using existing terrorism legislation or by creating a new process of proscription for hostile state actors.”
But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the House of Commons in November that the decision on whether to proscribe the IRGC would be kept “under review”.
That same month, 45 parliamentarians – including several Labour MPs – urged Starmer to proscribe the corps.
One of those, Luke Akehurst, the Labour MP for North Durham, told the JC today: "The involvement of Iranian intelligence agents in this case as ‘handlers’ of and recipients of information from Daniel Khalife shows the importance of countering Iranian espionage and other hostile activities in the UK and is a reminder of why the IRGC needs to be proscribed".
Jon Pearce, MP for High Peak and chair of Labour Friends of Israel said: “From supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine to planning terrorist attacks on British streets, the danger posed by the Iranian regime to British security is clear.”
He added: “It shows exactly why the government was right to issue tough new sanctions but we must now go further to counter the Iranian threat by doing what the Tories never did: ban the IRGC.”
