Reza Pahlavi > Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Reza Pahlavi, the son and heir of the exiled Shah of Iran, has claimed that proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would have the effect of “pulling out the biggest tooth the regime has”.
The IRGC is Tehran’s ideological terror army, founded in 1979 to protect the Islamic republican regime and subsequently a major military, political and economic force in Iran.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph during a trip to London, Pahlavi urged the UK government to “understand” the impact a full ban of the IRGC would have domestically in Iran.
He explained: “It will send a strong message to the regime but at the same time to those who are still part of that organisation to say, maybe its time for us to bail out”.
“Weakening the regime has a direct diametric effect of strengthening the people”, he added.
LFI parliamentarians have been pushing the UK government to proscribe the IRCG for several years as part of a broader strategy to counteract Tehran’s malign activities.
The Labour party endorsed proscription in January in a move backed by shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper.
However, despite speculation, the government is yet to announce proscription, with reports of divisions in Whitehall over the issue.
