Canada has listed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, joining the US and adding to pressure on European governments to follow suit.
The move means police can now charge people who materially or financially support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and requires banks to freeze any assets linked to the organisation.
The US designated the guards, part of the Iranian military, as a terrorist group in 2019. Britain has resisted a parallel move. The foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said there is no demand for the move from the UK security services and it would almost inevitably lead to Iran cutting off all diplomatic ties with Britain.
Labour, which is ahead in the polls before the UK’s 4 July election, has said it would proscribe the IRGC, a move that had strong cross-party support in the previous parliament, but the proposal was not included in its recent manifesto, which may indicate that the party is aware there are competing views in the intelligence services.
Lord Cameron has said he would prefer to deal with Iranian leaders directly and not through third parties as the US is required to do by using the Swiss embassy in Tehran as its conduit.
Canada has a large and politically active Iranian diaspora, in part because it has been generous in providing visas to dissident fleeing the regime, and the diaspora has been pressing for the move for years.
In January 2020 the IRGC shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 shortly after it left Tehran airport for Kyiv, killing 176 people including many with strong ties to Canada, and in Canada the IRGC has been accused of foreign interference, seeking to threaten and intimidate members of the Iranian diaspora and of wanting to carry out cyber-attacks.
Iran has said the Ukrainian plane was mistaken for a missile at a time of heightened tension between the west and Iran.
Canada had previously included the Quds force, the IRGC’s clandestine foreign intelligence and paramilitary wing, on its terror group list. In October 2022 it banned the entry of senior IRGC leaders into Canada and promised to impose sanctions on them. Ottawa severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 2010.
An Iranian activist, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, told MPs this month as they debated the listing: “If we do not do something now, their terror will spread like cancer and cost us even more – politically through foreign interference, economically through cyberwarfare and money laundering, and in lives through terrorism here in Canada.”
The Canadian decision comes in the midst of a convulsive presidential election campaign in Iran, after the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, in which the impact of Iran’s difficult relations with the rest of the world on its weak domestic economy is a central issue.
In response to Canada’s decision, Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, highlighted the IRGC role in fighting Islamic State and said Ottawa would be held responsible for its actions.
The Canadian public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, did not give a specific single reason why the decision had finally been taken after so much discussion, but denied it had been because of political pressure.
A letter in December 2023, a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged Justin Trudeau’s government to list the IRGC as a terrorist group, arguing it had played a role supporting Hamas before and after the group’s 7 October assault on Israel that sparked the current Gaza war.
The designation means that if a financial institution such as a bank has an account in the name of someone who has been publicly identified as a member of the IRGC, it will freeze, seize and restrain that account or property.
