Iranian group could be labelled national threat under proposed new law

Legislation which would enable the home secretary to designate some state-linked organisations such as Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a threat to national security could come into force as early as next month.

The National Security (State Threats) Bill was introduced to Parliament on Tuesday, and could become law within weeks.

It would allow Shabana Mahmood to designate groups involved in "foreign power threat activity" such as assassination attempts, surveillance and sabotage.

The bill also creates three new criminal offences, including one of supporting a designated state threat organisation and two of assisting and accepting material benefit from such a group.

The legislation was suggested by the government's Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation Jonathan Hall KC, when he concluded that it was difficult to ban state-linked groups like the IRGC as terrorist organisations.

In the last year, men have been convicted of spying on Hong Kong dissidents in the UK on behalf of China, carrying out an arson attack on a Ukrainian warehouse on behalf of the Russian group Wagner, and stabbing an opposition journalist in Wimbledon on behalf of Iran.

In those last two cases, the people who carried out the attacks were criminals who were doing it for money.

These cases showed that often hostile foreign powers were not only using their intelligence agencies to undermine security in the UK, but were also hiring criminal proxies through other state-linked organisations such as the Wagner Group and the IRGC.