The UK and European Union are expected to coordinate moves to label the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization following the execution of Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual citizen who was lured back to Iran by security services three years ago .
Akbari, who was a senior defense figure in reformist governments almost two decades ago, was hanged for spying for MI6, a charge his family denies. A family friend said “this is a case of murder” and vowed to prove the 61-year-old’s innocence, including claims he was paid by British intelligence.
Akbari leaves behind two daughters and a wife who lives in the UK. They had reason to hope for a last-minute reprieve, but his wife read about his execution on Iran’s state-run Judicial News Agency before dawn on Saturday morning.
In the first of what is likely to be a series of steps, the British government has imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Iran’s chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, described by the Foreign Office as “one of the most influential figures in the judiciary of Iran system”.
The UK also summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires, while British ambassador to Tehran Stephen Shercliffe was in turn summoned by Iran’s foreign ministry for what was seen as outrageous interference in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs. Shercliffe was told that “decisive action to protect the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran will not depend on the agreement of other governments, including England.” The Iranians claim that Akbari was recruited by a previous British ambassador.
Britain’s calculation will now be whether to take further steps that risk closing the door indefinitely to further talks on the stalled nuclear deal, or whether the danger of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is deemed too great to to antagonize the regime.
Talks on the nuclear program have been stalled for months, with UN weapons inspectors denied access to key Iranian sites. Without formally suspending the talks, Western powers said that while the crackdown on Iranian street protests continued, the nuclear deal was no longer their focus. Iran is believed to have enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb, but cannot yet weaponize the material.
A formal decision to ban the IRGC in both the UK and the EU is bound to lead to retaliation from Iran. The UK’s security secretary, Tom Tugendhat, suggested the move was justified: “The killing of another citizen by the state shows the cruelty of the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is threatening other British citizens even in the UK, as the head of MI5 recently revealed. We will protect our security.”
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverley condemned Iran’s “barbaric act” in the execution of Alireza Akbari. Photo: WPA/Getty Images
The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, warned in a note last week that “banning a state entity under the Terrorism Act 2000 would depart from consistent and decades-long UK policy and call into question the definition of terrorism, which so far has proven to be practical and effective”. He said the government’s longstanding policy had been to treat state terrorism as outside the Terrorism Act 2000, pointing out that the poisoning in Salisbury by Russian agents was treated as hostile state activity, not terrorism.
But he added that this appeared to be a political position rather than a legal view on the interpretation of the law, thereby giving some flexibility to UK ministers to ban the IRGC if they wanted.
In November, the Director General of MI5, Ken McCallum, described the Islamic Republic as “a growing concern. Iran projects threats to the UK directly through its aggressive intelligence services. At its most extreme, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British people or British persons perceived as enemies of the regime.
He also said British authorities had identified at least 10 “potential threats” to “kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime”.
Akbari’s friends say he was the victim of a power struggle at the top of the regime, including efforts by some officials to remove the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani. Akbari was a key Shamkani ally until 2005, when he left the government.
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Responding to the execution, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “I am appalled by the execution of British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari in Iran. It was a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley added: “This barbaric act deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This will not go unchallenged.”
Both German Foreign Minister Analena Berbock and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna have issued statements of solidarity with the UK.
Baerbock said: “The execution of Alireza Akbari is another inhumane act by the Iranian regime. We stand with our British friends and will continue to coordinate closely our actions against the regime and our support for the people of Iran.
Colonna said: “Iran’s repeated violations of international law cannot go unanswered, especially when it comes to the treatment of foreign nationals it arbitrarily detains.” France reiterates its firm opposition to the death penalty anywhere and under any circumstances and condemns its political use in Iran.
The EU is expected to impose sanctions on around 20 Iranian officials, including the sports minister, but Baerbock – under domestic pressure on the issue from the Christian Democrats – also said the EU was considering putting the IRGC on the terrorist list. EU lawyers are investigating the evidentiary thresholds that must be met to label the IRGC a terrorist organization.
The IRGC is already sanctioned in the UK, but some of those sanctions are due to be lifted this autumn as part of the nuclear deal.
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