Britain moves to crack down on Iran’s IRGC and other foreign state-linked threats with sweeping new bill

The British government introduced the National Security (State Threats) Bill this week, a measure that would hand authorities broad new powers to designate and punish foreign state-linked organizations operating inside the United Kingdom, with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps squarely in the crosshairs.

If approved, the legislation could take effect as soon as next month. Supporting a designated organization or accepting money from one would carry prison sentences of up to 14 years.

The bill represents a long-overdue recognition of what British intelligence has been warning about for years: hostile foreign governments are running assassination plots, surveillance operations, and sabotage campaigns on British soil, and the existing legal framework has been too weak to stop them.

What the bill would do

Under the legislation, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood would gain authority to designate groups responsible for what the government calls “foreign power threat activity.” That designation would trigger criminal penalties for anyone who supports such organizations or funnels money to them. The bill creates an entirely new legal framework for confronting threats posed by foreign governments and their proxies, as Fox News Digital reported.

The scope goes beyond terrorism proscription. The bill targets activities including assassination plots, surveillance, and sabotage, the kind of operations that intelligence services have linked to Iran, Russia, and China in recent years.

Officials are expected to make only a limited number of designations during the law’s first year if Parliament approves the measure. Whether the IRGC would be among the first groups designated remains unclear. Officials have not said.

The Iran problem Britain can no longer ignore

The timing matters. MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said last year that the domestic security service had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots. He also reported a 35% increase in state-threat investigations, a figure that should alarm anyone paying attention to the security landscape inside the UK.

British authorities have investigated possible Iranian links to arson attacks targeting Jewish sites. That alone should have prompted legislative action long ago.

Labour MP Luke Akehurst, described as one of Parliament’s leading advocates for action against the IRGC, told The Jerusalem Post why the existing terrorism proscription regime fell short:

“As well as brutally repressing freedoms within Iran, the IRGC poses a dangerous threat here in the UK, which our existing terrorism proscription regime was ill-equipped to deal with as it is a state actor.”

That distinction is the crux of the matter. The IRGC is not a freelance terrorist outfit. It is an arm of the Iranian state, and that status has allowed it to slip through legal frameworks designed for non-state actors. The new bill addresses that gap directly by targeting organizations tied to foreign governments.

Russia and China in the frame

Iran is not the only hostile power operating inside Britain. The UK has separately secured convictions against individuals accused of spying for or acting on behalf of Russian and Chinese entities. The new bill would give authorities a broader toolkit for confronting all three threats under one legal framework rather than relying on patchwork statutes that were never designed for state-sponsored covert operations.

The fact that Britain needed a new law to deal with foreign state actors running lethal plots on its own territory tells you how far behind the curve Western democracies have fallen. More than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots tracked by MI5, and until this week, no dedicated legal mechanism to designate the organizations behind them.

A meeting at Downing Street

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Mahmood met with security and justice officials at 10 Downing Street on April 30, 2026, underscoring the seriousness with which the government is treating the threat. MI5’s headquarters at Thames House in London has been the nerve center for tracking these state-backed operations.

The bill’s passage is not guaranteed, and the details of implementation will matter enormously. A limited number of designations in the first year could mean the government moves cautiously, too cautiously, if the intelligence picture is as dire as McCallum’s numbers suggest.

The right move, years late

Conservative critics on both sides of the Atlantic have long argued that Western governments treat state-sponsored threats with a passivity that borders on negligence. The United States designated the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019. Britain has taken years longer to build even the legal architecture for a similar step.

The question now is whether Parliament will approve the bill swiftly and whether the Home Secretary will use the designation power with the urgency the threat demands. Twenty lethal plots tracked by MI5. A 35% spike in state-threat investigations. Arson attacks on Jewish sites with possible Iranian links. The evidence is not subtle.

If the bill passes and the IRGC is not among the first organizations designated, lawmakers and the public will rightly ask what, exactly, the government is waiting for.

When a foreign government runs assassination plots on your soil and you need years to pass a law about it, the problem was never a lack of evidence. It was a lack of will.