Labour Friends of Israel calls for new punitive measures against Iran

In a foreword, LFI’s director Michael Rubin argues that the continued focus on Israel and its relationship with Palestinians continues to attract far more attention than Iran’s worsening human rights record and its growing threat: “The pernicious manner in which the disproportionate international focus on Israel functions is illustrated by the fact that while the UN Human Rights Council has passed 95 condemnatory resolution against the Jewish state since 2006, it has passed only 11 against Iran.

"This not only provides an utterly distorted picture, it also allows Tehran to escape the censure it deserves.”

In his section of the report, Steve McCabe MP, the Commons LFI chair, calls for immediate sanctions against eight senior Iranian officials who he alleges are responsible for human rights abuses. They include Hossein Ashtari, Commander in Chief of the Iranian police force, which killed hundreds of unarmed protesters across the country in November 2019.

Another is IRGC commander Hassan Shahvarpour, whose forces used machine guns to kill 148 in the city of Mahshahr alone during the same protests. Ali Ghanaatkar, the head of interrogations at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison where torture and summary executions have been rife for decades is another on Mr McCabe’s list.

Yet although Iran’s human right record is among the worst in the world, it seems Britain is not using the powerful tool of targeted sanctions against its perpetrators at all. In 2018, writes Mr McCabe, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act created powers to freeze assets and ban the entry of anyone suspected of human rights crimes.

To date, while sanctions have been imposed on a total of more than 70 individuals and organisations from Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Myanmar and North Korea, the only Iranians sanctioned by Britain were listed by the EU when Britain was still a member. Since the Act was passed, no Iranian has been added to the list.

“Britain should now draw up a comprehensive list of high-ranking members of the regime, the IRGC, judiciary and security forces responsible for human rights abuses,” Mr McCabe says. This will “build public confidence in the system and ensure the full potential of its deterrent and punishment function”.

Kasra Aarabi, an Iran expert from the Tony Blair Foundation, highlights the anomaly that while the US has proscribed the IRGC, Britain still has not.

But like his mentor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, sees the IRGC as “the main pillar of the Islamic Revolution” and the principal weapon in the struggle to extend its scope. “Indeed,” writes Aarabi, “the Supreme leader [has] called for the IRGC to grow in terms of power and authority by up to 100 times.”

In part, this is to enforce theocratic discipline in a country where, polling suggests, more than 60 per cent of Iranians would prefer to live in a secular state. But the IRGC is also becoming increasingly dangerous as the sponsor of proxy terrorist attacks across the region, mainly against western allies. According to IRGC leader Mohammed Reza Naghdi in January 2022, “our hard revenge will be the expulsion of the US from the region and the eradication of the Zionist regime”.

Writes Mr Aarabi: “Far from empty rhetoric, the regime has spent significant state resources in pursuit of what it regards as its working objective: from creating ballistic missiles with 'Death to Israel' written in Hebrew on them to arming, training and funding Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

“State propaganda that has accompanied these actions – including the construction of a digital clock counting down to Israel’s destruction, Holocaust cartoon contests and a recent image published by Khamenei’s office showing the armed ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem with the words 'Final Solution' – provides a glimpse into the antisemitic worldview that pervades the clerical regime.

“Against this backdrop, the military encirclement of Israel, which has been engineered by the IRGC and its proxy groups, is particularly concerning. “

Failing to proscribe the IRGC, Mr Araabi concludes, means Britain “has left militancy pursued by the Revolutionary Guard unchecked and, as a consequence, emboldened. Proscribing the IRGC would not close the door to diplomacy with Tehran. Instead, it would send a strong and clear message to Khamenei that the regime’s militancy and terrorism which is pursued via the IRGC – including its support for UK-designated terrorist groups like Hezbollah – will not be tolerated."