Last month, Britain imposed sanctions on the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and reports this week suggest it plans to classify the entire organization as a terrorist entity, triggering further measures. Oved Lobel points out that the group fits all of Australia’s official criteria for designating terrorist groups, and urges Canberra to follow suit:
The IRGC . . . has directly engaged in terrorism across the world and its ideology is explicitly jihadist. It also has strong, decades-long operational links to several groups listed by Australia as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), al-Qaeda, and Hizballah; indeed, in the case of Hizballah and even PIJ, it’s unclear whether they should even be considered separate groups from the IRGC.
Moreover, both directly and via Hizballah, the IRGC has links to Australia and is a direct threat to Australian interests, be it non-proliferation goals; attacks on maritime shipping; regional destabilization and aggression; terrorism promotion regionally and globally; kidnapping or assassinating regime opponents across the world; piracy and hostage-taking; material support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; human-rights atrocities, and many, many others.
Additionally, the IRGC is intimidating, threatening, and surveilling regime opponents inside Australia itself. Given that the IRGC has attempted to kidnap or assassinate regime opponents in the UK, U.S., Canada, and across the world, and occasionally succeeded, the idea that the same is not happening in Australia is inconceivable. The IRGC poses a direct threat to the lives of Australian citizens and residents, particularly those of Iranian background.
Australia has done too little when it comes to Iran—acting later than our allies and even then only after mounting domestic and external pressure—apparently out of the misguided belief that Iran is far away and not our problem.
Read more on Fresh Air: https://aijac.org.au/featured/time-for-australia-to-list-the-irgc-as-a-terrorist-group/