This is a guest post by Stephen Hoffman
The ZF (UK Zionist Federation) campaign on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) underlines the fact that Iran is one of the largest sponsors of global terrorism – creating and training terrorist organisations which indiscriminately target civilians. This chimes in with its goals of exporting the Islamist revolution. To understand how it is an active terror group with no respect for national sovereignty one only has to look at the IRG’s involvement in Syria.
The IRG, backed by the Iranian Regime, has been crucial in providing fighters, weapons and training to the Assad regime and the Iranian Lebanese based proxy terrorist organisation Hezbollah. This plays a major role in the massacres Assad is continuing to carry out during a bloody civil war. It has also led to Assad using groups like the IRG and Hezbollah to attack Israel from Syria. This is an example of how the IRG is committed to spreading its brand of terrorism worldwide, so as to attack Israel and the West. This cannot be ignored and the UK and EU must proscribe the IRG, its members, supporters and affiliates as a terrorist organisation. Currently only certain members of the IRG are sanctioned, which a large and active terrorist organisation like the IRG can circumvent.
To understand the IRG’s involvement in Syria one has to look at its close relationship with Hezbollah, created by the IRG in the 1980s. The IRG’s constitution charges it with supporting what they call freedom movements, but which are in reality terrorist groups. It is important to look at the events of April 2013 when the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, met with IRG commander General Qasem Suleimani as part of an operational plan for Iran to establish a 150,000 man force in Syria. The majority of the personnel come from Iran and a much smaller number from Hezbollah. Since then under the instructions of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah has taken its orders from the IRG in Syria. You can find more about the role of the IRG in Syria in the ZF’s briefing as part of its overall campaign to list the IRG as a terrorist organisation here.
Alongside their support of Hezbollah in Syria, the IRG has put its own men on the ground fighting alongside Assad. It has also provided military trainers and key communications, which have helped the Assad regime remain in power. Considering credible reports of Assad’s use of chemical weapons the IRG is clearly breaching international law and is implicated in the deaths of thousands of civilians.
We can stand up to the IRG’s terrorism. Counter-terrorism experts believe that proscribing a terrorist group helps choke off funding to an organisation and leading personnel and the terrorist organisations it backs. The EU and UK, as key players in foreign affairs, must do this to ensure the security of their citizens in the face of an organisation who wants to export terrorism to the streets of Europe, and done its best to turn Syria into a terrorist paradise.
If you agree that it’s time that the EU and UK woke up to the threat of the IRG’s global terrorist network, then please support the ZF’s campaign calling on the IRG to be designated as a terrorist organisation across the EU. To learn more about the campaign, read the campaign brief here, like the campaign Facebook page here and sign our petition here. So don’t just stand there, take part in a campaign which speaks up for the humanity, which terrorists try to destroy.
Sarah adds: I thought this article in the latest Spectator was pretty good on the situation in Syria more generally.
