Keir Starmer urged to answer plea of brave Iranian dissident as Tories 'stand ready' to support emergency action

Olivia Utley
Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:56:26 +0000

Keir Starmer has been urged to answer the plea of a brave dissident inside Iran and bring emergency legislation outlawing the country’s brutal Revolutionary Guard.

In a life-risking video message sent to GB News, the 41-year-old man living in southern Iran, questioned why the Government hadn’t added the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to the "terrorist list".

The man, whose identity we have kept secret over fear of reprisals from the cruel regime’s henchmen, urged the Government to do more in the war and said it was "disappointing" they hadn’t been proscribed.

The European Union added the IRGC to its terror list in January.

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But so far Britain has failed to follow suit.

Now the Prime Minister has been told that political rivals here are keen to work with the Government to back new law and make it happen here.

Speaking to GB News, Shadow Foreign Secretary, Dame Priti Patel MP, said: "The Iranian regime has slaughtered a generation of brave freedom fighters in towns and cities across the country.

"It has plotted terror attacks on British soil and fired missiles at our bases.

"The IRGC is a key part of the authoritarian regime and if the Government brings forward emergency legislation to proscribe it, then we stand ready to work with them on it.

"Iran must stop its attacks on other countries, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and respect the fundamental rights of its people."

The IRGC, set up in 1979 after the country’s Islamic revolution, stands accused of having the blood of thousands of its own people on its hands.

Security forces, including the 190,000-strong IRGC, roam the streets targeting protestors, lethally dealing with dissent.

After the EU made their move at the start of the year, Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the bloc of performing a political "stunt".

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Australia, Canada and the US have also put the IRGC on their terror lists, but Britain so far has not.

It was expected that Britain would act quickly in the same vein.

But no timeline was set out and one Government source told The Times in January it would be introduced "when parliamentary time allows".

Proscribing the group here would prove popular among those living in fear within Iran.

But the dissident who contacted GB News to make his plea warned Britain that the move alone would not be enough and allowing the current "uncontrollable" Iranian government to remain intact would have huge repercussions.

He said: "Rest assured that keeping the Islamic Republic of Iran in place will lead to much bigger disaster while Britain thinks they are dealing with full control over such a regime.

"However, this regime is uncontrollable.

"We hope that they too will take action against this regime, just like the Americans and Israel, and not only take a defence position."