Written evidence submitted by Kasra Aarabi, Analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (UKI0018)

Relevant Experience 1. The submission author is an Analyst specialising on and Shia Islamist Extremism at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. His research focuses on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its role in nurturing Shia militancy across the Middle East and beyond. Please see the bibliography for a summary of recent publications. 2. The author’s analysis has featured in international outlets, including CNBC Europe, The Times, The Sunday Times, , Al Jazeera, the National, Arab News, Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post. 3. Prior to working at the Institute, the author worked as a researcher for the UK House of Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group on Iran and as an analyst on Iran and Middle East for former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. 4. The author is a native Persian speaker and holds an MA (Hons) in International Relations and a BA in International Politics, both from King’s College London.

Summary 5. The UK has played a key role mediating between US and European policy towards Iran, including towards ’s destabilising role in the region. Now, more so than ever, the UK can play a significant role in bridging the transatlantic gap on policy towards Iran, which Tehran has sought to exploit following disagreements between Washington and Brussels over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

6. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the Iranian regime’s ideological army – is Tehran’s main vehicle for delivering its regional agenda. The IRGC is driving Iran’s militancy and destabilising behaviour across the Middle East and has been responsible for attacks not only on UK interests in the region, but also the lives of UK troops.

7. UK foreign policy towards Iran’s role in the region must address the IRGC – which is at the crux of Iran’s regional behaviour – and seek to limit and contain its activities and ideological reach. Among other things, this should include proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Proscribing the Guard will both bolster efforts to contain the spread and legitimisation of its violent and extremist ideology and provide a clear mandate for government, civil society groups and technology companies to comprehensively sanction, challenge and limit the IRGC’s activity.

The UK’s Foreign Policy Towards Iran’s Role in the Region 8. The UK has played a key role mediating between US and European policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran, including policy towards Iran’s role in the region.

9. Now, more so than ever, the UK can play a critical role bridging the gap between the US and Europe, which has widened over disagreements on the 2015 nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA)

10. Iran has, and will continue to, exploit the gap between US and Europe and take advantage of the disunited transatlantic front to advance its goals. It has long been Khamenei, Iran’s , policy to break the transatlantic partnership as part of his “West minus the US” policy, however, this has only recently been achieved from the Iranian perspective. In essence, Tehran believes it can pressure Europe – who it regards as having a softer approach to its policies – into giving greater economic concessions through a combination of diplomacy and militancy. 11. Feeling the economic brunt of US sanctions, as well as rising internal anti-regime dissent, since May 2019, Iran has escalated its militancy and destabilising behaviour in the region through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

12. The last six months of 2019 saw the IRGC attack nine commercial oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz (including a UK-flagged ship) and shoot down a US drone on international waters. It also conducted the Saudi Aramco oilfield strike, causing the biggest disruption to global oil supplies in history, and ordered its Shia militia proxies to ransack the US Embassy in Baghdad. In January 2020, the IRGC took this escalation further by orchestrating a strike that killed a US citizen in Iraq and in doing so crossed Washington’s explicit redline. The US responded to this attack through a targeted strike against Qassim Soleimani, head of the IRGC’s extraterritorial unit, the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, killing the Iranian commander.

13. Since then, tensions between the US and Iran have continued to rise, albeit indirectly through Iranian-backed Shia proxies in the region. In March 2020, a rocket attack by Kataib Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq which receives arms, training and funding by the IRGC, killed two US troops and one UK soldier.

14. UK policy towards in the region must address the problem of the IRGC, which is at the centre of Tehran’s destabilising regional influence. The Guard has not only been responsible for attacking UK interests in the Middle East, but it has also been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of UK troops.

Iran’s Main Regional Tool: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

15. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the main force driving Iran’s regional policy and behaviour.

16. Unlike the Iranian army (the artesh), which is tasked with protecting Iran’s territorial sovereignty, the IRGC is mandated by Iran’s 1979 constitution to pursue “an ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is extending the sovereignty of God’s law () throughout the world.”

17. The end goal of Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was never an Iranian state. Rather, it was the expansion of the revolution across the Islamic world, centred on Iran’s supreme leader as the leader of all Muslims worldwide – a role defined in the constitution of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini – the father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and first supreme leader of Iran – sought to use the creation of an Islamic state in Iran as a springboard to create a pan-Islamist order that would stretch across the entire Islamic ummah (global Muslim community) with Iran at its centre. Despite this grand ambition, Iran – as one of the few Shia Muslim states in the Middle East – could not escape its Shia identity in a region surrounded by Sunni Muslim countries. While Khomeini’s Islamist utopia gained traction with some Shia communities outside of Iran, which enabled the regime to attract and mobilise foreign fighters for its cause abroad, it was by and large rejected by Sunni communities across the Middle East. However, for Iran’s clerical establishment, this was enough to create an opening for exporting its militant ideology. Playing on, and fuelling, sectarian tensions has been one of the IRGC’s main tools of leverage for encouraging young Shia Muslims to take up arms for its cause.

18. Since the revolution in 1979, Iran’s clerical establishment has used the IRGC as the main force driving the regime’s Shia Islamist ideology, both inside and outside Iran. The Guard has been the tool to “export the revolution” abroad, albeit through militancy and insurgency.

19. While it is commonplace in the West to view the IRGC as being a conventional state military force, the Guard is most accurately described as an institutionalised militia. The IRGC began as a pro- Khomeini, Islamist militia and many its founding members had experience training with Palestinian militants in Lebanon prior to 1979. Upon the in 1979, these men immediately returned to Iran to form a militia – “Guardians of the Islamic Revolution – which would prove fundamental in co-opting the people’s revolution and violently consolidating the theocratic principle of velayat-e – a Shia Islamist system of governance that transfers all power to the Shia clergy. The IRGC has maintained its militia identity to continue to advance its ideological objectives, despite becoming institutionalised by the state. Terrorist attacks, hostage-taking and assassinations continue to define the IRGC’s regional and international behaviour.

20. For over 40 years, the IRGC has been responsible for plotting and executing global terrorist attacks, hostage-takings, maritime piracy, political assassinations on foreign soil – including in Europe – human rights violations and supressing domestic dissent within Iran. It has provided key operational support for terrorist attacks stretching as far afield as Bulgaria, Thailand and Argentina.

21. In the 1980s, Iran’s leaders came up with the idea of establishing the IRGC’s Quds (Jerusalem) Force: an extraterritorial unit of the IRGC that would act as an Islamic army with a mandate to export the revolution overseas and “liberate” through the destruction of Israel – what Tehran calls the “Zionist regime” and a “cancerous tumour” that must be “eradicated.” The destruction of the State of Israel is at the heart of the IRGC’s Shia Islamist extremist ideology and the Guard is the main force driving this across the Middle East today.

22. Since its creation, the IRGC has also worked tirelessly to nurture Shia militancy across the Middle East: creating, arming, training and financing some of the deadliest Islamist terrorist groups in the world. This includes the likes of Lebanese Hizbullah, which it helped establish to destroy Israel and export the Islamic Revolution to Lebanon, to Iraq’s Asai’b Ahl al-Haq, which it armed to conduct over 6,000 attacks on American and British forces in Iraq (2003-2011).

23. The Guard’s relationship with terrorism is not restricted to Shia extremists. It supports Sunni Islamist groups from Hamas to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and has had ties with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

24. At present, the IRGC effectively operates as a “franchise builder” for militant groups that embrace its revolutionary Shia Islamist ideology, or the broader foreign policy aims of the Islamic Republic.

25. This has had direct consequences on the stability of the Middle East, UK interests in the region and UK national security.

26. In Iraq, following the collapse of Saddam in 2003, the IRGC Quds (Jerusalem) Force – the Guards extraterritorial unit – worked to recruit, radicalise and organise young Shia men into militias loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, rather than the Iraqi state. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have been a constant source of violence, extremism and instability in the country. The sectarian agenda being pushed by Tehran and its proxies brought Iraq to the brink of civil war and would later contribute to the rise of Islamic State in 2014.

27. In Syria, as millions of Syrians poured onto the streets against Bashar al Assad, the IRGC helped prop up the Assad regime with a degree of unbridled violence which left over half a million Syrians dead.

28. The IRGC arms, funds and trains other militias, including the Houthis in Yemen, Lebanese Hizbullah, Shia militias in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Today in the Middle East, the IRGC has prepared approximately 200,000 fighters–from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan–to rise in support of a cause which is rooted in a perceived existential threat to the Shia Muslim identity and a hostility towards global powers and their allies. The paramilitarisation of the Middle East at the behest of the IRGC has not only significantly impacted stability in the region, but it has also undermined existing state structures.

29. Since 2017, there has also been a surge in IRGC activity in Europe. The discovery of an Iranian- linked bomb factory in London in 2019, as well as the successive chain of terror plots across Europe from 2017 and 2018, suggests that the interests of this group goes beyond the confines of the Middle East and underscores the urgency in countering the challenge it poses.

A Driver of Shia Islamist Extremism: Radicalisation and the IRGC

30. In April 2019, the US designated the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). This unprecedented move put the Guard – a state actor – on a list alongside non-state actor groups it supports like Hizbullah and Hamas, as well as the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

31. This move was significant both symbolically and practically. In announcing the decision, the US State Department asserted that designation aimed to “render the IRGC radioactive”, increasing the cost for any person or entity seeking to provide “material support” for the group. US President Donald Trump also announced that designation of the Guard made it clear that “if you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism.”

32. While the decision to designate the IRGC has focused on its actions, namely violence, there has been less attention on the causes, the ideas driving the violence. Almost 20 years since the September 11 (9/11) terrorist attacks, policymakers have almost universally recognised that when dealing with violent extremist groups, a security approach is not enough in the long-term, as the strength of these entities lies in their ideology to inspire violence.

33. Research by the Tony Blair Institute analysed the internal training manuals used by the IRGC to radicalise its recruits as part of a formal programme of indoctrination in the Guard – what the IRGC calls “ideological-political training”. This is the first time these training manuals have been translated and analysed from Persian to English. All of these manuals are official IRGC documents that have been sanctioned by Iran’s supreme leader’s representative to the IRGC, with the latest editions reprinted in and published between 2012-2016.

34. This new evidence underscores that the ideology of the IRGC is both violent and extremist and is based on a distortion of Islamic scripture that justifies, glorifies and prioritises armed jihad against the “enemies of Islam”, which the Guard identifies as non-Muslims and opponents of the regime (including Muslims). Their extremist interpretation of Islam bears a striking resemblance to groups that are already proscribed as terrorist organisations, such as al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hizbullah.

35. The material used to radicalise IRGC members calls on recruits to kill Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians through armed jihad because they “do not have true and acceptable faith”, underlining that it is “obligatory for Muslims to fight them to pressure them to give up their devious beliefs and to accept Islam.”

36. The material also teaches IRGC members that Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has the “same authority of the Prophet and the infallible ” and therefore has a responsibility to “spread Islam to other countries and regions of the world”.

37. It is clear from these internal documents that the IRGC has expansionist ambitions in the region and promotes a universal Shia Islamist doctrine that it exports to regional proxy militias, spreading violence throughout the Middle East. While Western commentators have often described Iran’s use of proxies in the region as being part of Tehran’s “forward-defence” deterrence strategy, this contradicts the way in which the IRGC defines its own support for Shia militias in places like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Recruits are taught that Tehran supports these militias not for deterrence but with the objective of “exporting Islam”.

38. The IRGC training documents propagate a global conspiracy against Shiism from a “[Sunni] Arab- Zionist-Western axis” and in doing so fuel sectarian tensions. They depict the Sunni Arab Gulf states as being in a tacit partnership with Israel, Britain and the US with the goal of eradicating Shiism and its holy sites. The Guard claims Wahhabism and Salafism – subsects of Sunni Islam – are of Jewish origin and were created by British colonialists as a way to destroy Islam from within. The IRGC also claims that ISIS and al-Qaeda were created by the US, Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia to destroy . The Guard also states as well as “providing intelligence [and] weapons” the UK provides “media support” to ISIS through the BBC – what it refers to as the “English government’s channel”.

39. The IRGC is not just a military force, but also offers a total worldview that justifies the subjugation of women and enforces an extreme interpretation of Islam.

40. The IRGC uses the internet to freely disseminate its ideology, unhindered by safeguards that technology companies use to stem other forms of extremist online.

41. The IRGC has increased the time it dedicates to the radicalisation of its members. Coupled with these efforts, the Syrian conflict provided the Guard with an opportunity to apply what it was teaching in the classroom on the battlefield.

42. The repercussions of the IRGC’s presence in Syria have implications beyond just foreign policy towards Iran. Just as the 1979 Afghanistan conflict proved to be the single most important factor in the growth of Salafi-jihadism and Sunni radicalisation, the Syrian conflict may prove to be the catalyst for renewed Shia Islamist militancy in years to come. It is often forgotten that the IRGC was able to rally approximately 80,000 foreign Shia fighters from across the region for its fight to uphold the Assad regime – what it framed as a Shia jihad in “defence of the holy Shia shrines.”

Moving Forward: Limiting the Scope & Reach of the IRGC 43. UK policy towards Iran’s regional role must seek to limit the scope and reach of the IRGC, which is at the centre of Tehran’s militancy and destabilising activities in the Middle East. Moreover, the violent and extremist ideas the Guard promotes have far reaching implications not just on Iranians but on Shia communities across the world.

44. Proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation should be at the forefront of strategy dealing with the Guard in the region. Designating the IRGC both enables efforts to contain the spread and legitimisation of its ideology, and provides a clear mandate for governments, civil society groups and technology companies to comprehensively sanction, challenge and limit the Guards activity. Countries that have designated the IRGC, or its Quds Force branch, include: US, Canada, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

45. In 2019, the UK government proscribed Hizbullah as a way to restrict the group’s illicit financing activities, as well as limiting its ability to disseminate jihadi propaganda. However, these efforts are significantly undermined while the IRGC is able to provide Hizbullah with ideo-political, financial and armaments support.

46. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the UK government may proscribe an organisation if a group: commits or participates in acts of terrorism; prepares for terrorism; promotes or encourages terrorism (including the unlawful glorification of terrorism); or is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The IRGC fits all of the criteria above.

47. Furthermore, under the Home Office’s “Proscribed Terrorist Organisations” report, one of the reasons cited for Hizbullah’s inclusion is because it is “committed to armed resistance to the state of Israel and aims to seize all Palestinian territories and Jerusalem from Israel. It supports terrorism in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.” The IRGC – which helped create Hizbullah and continues to arm, train and fund it – is also committed to armed resistance against Israel, whilst supporting terrorism in Iraq and Palestinian territories. In fact, the reason Hizbullah has these ideological objectives is because it has embraced the ideology of the IRGC and the Islamic Republic – something Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah chief, has explicitly underlined himself. 48. Just as the UK government underlined that the decision to proscribe Hizbullah will not disrupt “commitment” to diplomatic engagement with the government of Lebanon, proscribing the IRGC should not impede diplomatic engagement with the government of the Islamic Republic. Targeted sanctions against the IRGC is also an important first step to closing the gap between the US and Europe on Iran policy.

49. The UK’s countering violent extremism (CVE) strategy should also target the full spectrum of violent Islamist extremism, which must include Shia Islamist extremism. Until now, CVE has almost exclusively focused on Salafi-jihadi ideology. While this is understandable in the post-9/11 context, the exclusive focus on Sunni Islamist extremist violence has played into the hands of Shia Islamist groups as their perspectives are not challenged.

50. As with other violent Islamist groups – including ISIS and al-Qaeda – the IRGC manipulates religious scripture to provide justification for its violent extremism. Government and policymakers should also develop counter-narratives that challenge the violent and extremist worldview of the IRGC. This must include identifying and engaging Muslim religious leaders with credible authority among Shia communities across the Middle East, who can counter the worldview of the IRGC. This will require engaging with various Shia seminaries (Hawzas) that sit outside Iran’s control and empowering the voices of religious leaders – including dissident Iranian clerics – who are able to debunk the IRGC’s theological foundation. Like Sunni Islam, Shiism is not homogenous. It is important to acknowledge that the narrow Shia Islamist ideology espoused by the IRGC and Iran’s political-clerical establishment is not representative of the world’s 200 million Shia Muslims. The new wave of anti-Khamenei and anti-IRGC protests across the Shia heartlands in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran are an indication of the increasing rejection of Iran’s state-sanctioned totalitarian Shia Islamist ideology.

51. The UK Government should also work with technology companies to broaden their classifications on extremist content beyond Salafi-jihadism to include Shia Islamist extremist material. Despite state censorship of the internet in Iran, the IRGC is fully active online and uses the internet – in particular social media – to disseminate its violent and extremist ideology beyond the . This is particularly important today given the role the IRGC has played in spreading disinformation and ideologically driven conspiracy theories about Covid-19, which it has blamed on a “US-Zionist bio-terror attack.”

Selected Bibliography: Ali Ansari and Kasra Aarabi, “Ideology and Iran’s Revolution: How 1979 Changed the World”, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 11 February 2019: https://institute.global/policy/ideology-and-irans-revolution- how-1979-changed-world Kasra Aarabi, “Beyond Borders: The Expansionist Ideology of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 4 February 2020: https://institute.global/policy/beyond-borders- expansionist-ideology-irans-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps Kasra Aarabi, “The Fundamentals of Iran’s Islamic Revolution”, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 11 February 2019: https://institute.global/policy/ideology-and-irans-revolution-how-1979-changed-world

Kasra Aarabi, “What is Velayat-e Faqih?” Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 20 March 2019: https://institute.global/policy/what-velayat-e-faqih Kasra Aarabi, “Suleimani’s Killing Could Change the Middle East for the Better”, Foreign Policy, 7 January 2020: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/07/suleimanis-killing-could-change-the-middle-east-for-the-better/ Kasra Aarabi, “Iran Knows Who to Blame for the Virus: America and Israel” Foreign Policy, 19 March 2020: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/19/iran-irgc-coronavirus-propaganda-blames-america-israel/ Kasra Aarabi, “Iran’s Regional Campaign is Starting to Flop”, Foreign Policy, 11 December 2019: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/11/collapse-iranian-shiism-iraq-lebanon/ Nader Uskowi, “Temperature Rising: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Wars in the Middle East”, 2019. Saeid Golkar, “The Supreme Leader and the Guard: Civil-Military Relations and Regime Survival in Iran” February 2019: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-supreme-leader-and-the- guard-civil-military-relations-and-regime-surviv

April 2020