Britain is now one of its many targets. The IRGC has sponsored terror, kidnap and seemingly endless sordid criminal acts since its founding. Its targets have always been global and since 2015, there has been a surge in IRGC activity in the UK and Europe. In 2022, MI5 acknowledged a real threat from Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services” to kidnap or kill UK-based people.

On Monday, the UK placed further sanctions on Iranian officials following the execution of dual British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari. On 12 January 2023, the House of Commons passed a motion calling on the UK government to finally proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. The vote passed unanimously in favour, though it’s not binding. It does, however, remain an indication of the growing tensions between the UK and Iran, which have intensified after the recent execution of dual British-Iranian national, former Iranian Deputy Minister of Defence Alireza Akbari, for alleged spying.

On one level, as Kasra Aarabi, Iran Programme Lead at the Tony Blair Institute, observes, the IRGC is a “violent, Islamist-extremist organisation that operates no differently to proscribed groups in the United Kingdom, including the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda and Hizbullah”. But the group is more than this. Key figures in the 1979 revolution — some of whom had trained with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Lebanon and even, further back, the Muslim Brotherhood — decided that, after the Islamic Revolution achieved victory by overthrowing the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, an organisation would be needed not just to safeguard the revolution, but to bolster and strengthen it.

A tough gig, then. But what makes the IRGC so potent, beyond mere military prowess, is its ideological mission — which has only grown over the past few decades. If the group’s centrality emerged with the foundation of the state, its only increased in 1989 when Ali Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader. Khamenei was determined to use the IRGC to further spearhead one of post-revolutionary Tehran’s key ideological tenets: exporting its Islamic revolution across the Muslim world. For this task, he set up a division known as the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, whose official objective is to “liberate” Jerusalem through the destruction of the state of Israel.

The Quds Force has become the engine of Iranian offensive operations across the Middle East — murdering its way across Syria, Yemen and Iraq, to name just a few countries. And in all the theatres in which it operates it does so not just as a military outfit, but a political one, too.

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The case of Iraq is instructive. It is Tehran, partly through skilfully deploying its Quds Force, that has been the clear winner of 2003’s cretinously planned and executed invasion of Iraq. From the beginning it exploited the void left by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, to expand its political, military and economic penetration of Baghdad. This is the bonus that comes with “extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world”. It tends to have considerable geopolitical benefits.

It’s no surprise that the Quds Force was led by Qasem Soleimani, who — until the US droned him in Baghdad in January 2020 — was a man of great charisma, striking looks and political acumen. Yes, Tehran was behind a lot of the violence in post-invasion Iraq, not least through its founding and sponsoring of several Shia militias to challenge and often supplant Baghdad’s authority. But it was the political talents of Soleimani, and his Iraqi sidekick Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis (who was killed in the same drone strike), that really drove the Iranian stake into the heart of Iraqi governance.

When, in 2014, several of the Iran-based Shia militias decided to band together in an umbrella organisation that came to be known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), it was Soleimani and Muhandis who kept their near-pathological infighting in line, and who were integral to formulating their political strategy. They were soldiers, but they were also what the Russians would call “political technologists”.

When they got whacked, it all started to fall apart. In the October 2021 Iraqi general elections, the political block of the Iran-backed Shia militias lost badly; and it lost because the various parties failed to understand the ramifications of electoral reforms, while their opponents used them to their own advantage. Since then, Baghdad has been unable to form a government while the Shia militias are squabbling among themselves and becoming even more unpopular among the Iraq people.

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As one regional expert told me last year: “The mess the Iran-backed Shia militias are in right now, can be traced directly to that drone strike in 2020. Without Soleimani they simply aren’t as politically effective.”

This speaks to an important, and inescapable, wider truth: All of the IRGC’s soft power activities are designed to aid its hard power activities. It has, over decades, cultivated demonstrably effective political, cultural, economic and intelligence divisions, the importance of which can never be underestimated. They ensure the group’s influence permeates into almost all aspects of national life, and across the Middle East — and now, critically, even in the United Kingdom.

In the UK, the IRGC can rely on a lattice of ostensibly religious and cultural institutions to further its ideological and criminal aims. Much of its propaganda, which is designed to nurture homegrown extremism, poses a threat to Britain’s national security and promotes the Guard’s ideology in mosques, charities and schools.

An analysis of the IRGC’s training manuals used to radicalise recruits reveals that the group’s ideology promotes both violence and a clear doctrine of extremism underpinned by a misreading of Islamic texts similar to terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. The materials make armed jihad against “enemies of Islam” — identified as non-Muslims and opponents of the regime (including Muslims) — an imperative for adherents, and explicitly calls for killings against Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.

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As ever, ideology stands in the service of politics. The materials are at pains to stress that there is an equally strong imperative to torture Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic prior to their execution on the basis they are “waging war against God” (moharebs).

As protests continue across Iran following the killing of Mahsa Amini in police custody on 16 September 2022, a succession crisis also looms. The 83-year-old Khamenei is seeking to ensure that his son Mojtaba, if he does not follow him as Supreme Leader, is at least the real power broker in Iran. In the background sit the IRGC, determined that whoever succeeds will be amenable to their interests.

Right now, Iran is in flux. The protests are unquestionably the most serious the regime has ever faced. The IRGC’s foot soldiers, the Basij, are out in the streets alongside the protestors doing what they do best — killing and maiming. Alongside mass unrest, the economy is tanking; summer will bring with it the now-familiar problem of drought. The threats facing Tehran are multiple and pretty much existential now.

The Mullahs and their sadistic enforcers are worried. In a state known for its near-pathological exercise of control, the future is unusually vague. One thing, though, is certain: whatever happens next, the IRGC will stand malevolently at the centre of it, and not just in Tehran but, unless the UK government finally acts, increasingly in London as well.

A new report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change returns us to this fraught subject. “Narratives of Hate: The Spectrum of Far-right Worldviews in the UK” takes a look at a number of groups which it identifies as “far-Right”. These are: Generation Identity England, Britain First, For Britain and the British National Party. The report states that if these groups are “left unaddressed”, then they will “continue to sow division in Britain”.

In its assessment, the report takes the beliefs of these groups and compares them with those of the Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in July 2011. His views, according to the TBI, provide “a clear baseline to examine other extremist messages in the far Right”.

All these groups, according to the report, hold views which include “Believing that Islamist scriptures promote violent jihad and terrorism”; “Claiming that Muslim immigration to Western countries is paving the way for implementing Sharia and Islamic laws, and ‘Islamifying’ Europe”; and “Suggesting that Muslims are more prone to committing acts of sexual violence and rape”. Another accusation made by all these groups is that the authorities and the media have been “covering up crimes committed by Muslims and immigrants”.

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I am uncomfortable with the idea of using a terrorist or mass murderer as a ‘baseline’ measure. After all, if some madman tomorrow committed an atrocity in the name of the environment, free healthcare or any other idea, would the TBI use this as a reason to tar as a violent extremist anyone who held the same beliefs?  Political violence, by its very nature, steps beyond the ordinary run of political discussion.

But there are pools and swamps of opinion in which people do swim before they commit atrocities. And it probably is worth trying to work out what it is there that leads someone towards violence. To do so, however, is a complex process, and we are all, to some extent, learning as we go along on. The list of arguments provided by the TBI shows how difficult this is.

For instance, there are indeed people who accuse all Muslims of terrible things, as laid out in the list. By doing so, they are clearly uttering an untruth, as well as showing an ugly, bigoted tendency to smear an entire group based on the practises of a small few. What, though, if someone were to point to the fact – which numerous reports including this one from the Muslim-run Quilliam Foundation have shown – that men of Muslim background are ‘over-represented’ (that is, compared to their proportion in the general population) in gang ‘grooming’ cases. And what if someone were to say that the authorities and the media have been involved in ‘covering up’ such crimes?

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To suggest that there had been a concerted, orchestrated cover-up which involved every portion of the state and media might sound like a wild exaggeration. It might sound deeply conspiratorial. But the problem is that it is not wholly untrue. It is only an exaggeration – in fact, we only know of the grooming gangs in Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxfordshire and other places because some brave individuals from the political and media establishments broke ranks and reported these horrific stories.

Andrew Norfolk of The Times, for example, spent years chasing the Rotherham story, including speaking to many of the victims. He reported on this and subsequent cases in spite of people still (even then) attempting to charge him with ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ for reporting the story.

It’s problematic for the Blair assessment, too, that we know that there were cover-ups, and that these were duly exposed. In 2013, Alexis Jay was tasked by Rotherham’s council with looking into the crimes that had occurred there. Her report found that there had indeed been a systematic failure to address the cases when they had come out. And that the rape of children as young as 11 had been ignored by the local police and by the local council, among other authorities.

The Jay report – like Louise Casey’s which followed – found that a culture in which people feared accusations of racism was one of the reasons that these dreadful cases had been able to go on as long as they had. Likewise, there are reliable and verified reports going back a decade and half showing that the media and authorities have often cooperated to ‘pull’ reporting of such horrific stories, to allay other concerns.

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So here lies the problem with the Blair Institute’s claims. They seek to draw a line designating as ‘extreme’ some views which are also true. Given that the cover-ups have been proved – and officially registered – why should saying as much be cause to label someone as ‘far-right’ or linked to a mass murderer?

The answer appears to lie in the move from ‘some’ to ‘all’ and from ‘cases’ to ‘endemic’. It is true that some groups – including those which the TBI identifies – may be guilty of wild exaggeration. But all politics – and you may say all political debate – relies on a degree of exaggeration to make a point. The Institute might consult with its founder if it seeks any pertinent examples. And though most of us tire or are turned off by such exaggerations (generally realising in the process that the person in question cannot be trusted), it is some leap to say that an exaggeration should demand the intervention of the law.

Yet the TBI seems to think it should. It argues that depending on where various opinions sit on its scale of extremism, the groups it looks into ought to be ‘designated’ as ‘hate groups’. It calls for political leaders to, among other things, “Stop problematic groups and stem their narratives”. Suggestions for how to do this would include ensuring that ‘designated hate groups’ would be ‘impeded from appearing on media outlets or engaging with public institutions’. But all would not necessarily be lost for the groups in question. “Hate designation would be time-limited and automatically reviewed, conditioned on visible reform of the group.”

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Beneath the bland and unassuming presentation, this, and much else in the report, is in some ways extraordinary.  What is one to say of a situation in which government officials could designate and ban from all media – including state-run and privately-owned media – groups whose views and expressions they disapprove of, pending official investigation and evidence of that group’s realignment with views which are more acceptable? Such a plan would be authoritarian even if the groups in question were guilty of spreading constant and provable lies.

Yet the problem the TBI inadvertently highlights is that while everything these groups say may be unpleasant and ugly, not everything they say is false. Some of the things the Institute would have them banned for saying are true, or true in part.

Here is the test for a society, and indeed a test for independently-financed organisation like the one which produced this report. Where somebody is wrong, they should be shown to be wrong. Where they are wrong in part, they should be shown to be wrong in part. But, as with Islamist groups, asking the state to decide on such matters demands that the state be infallible in making such decisions. Drawing lines in these areas is hard. A fact that the Tony Blair Institute has perhaps unwittingly demonstrated.