The British government’s failure to add Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to the list of proscribed terrorist organisations following the executing of a British national, Alireza Akbari, at the weekend is another example of the “weakness” of the government’s policy of “appeasement,” according to an expert on Iran.
On Monday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told Parliament in a debate on Akbari: “Let there be no doubt, he fell victim to the political vendettas of a vicious regime. His execution was the cowardly and shameful act of a leadership which thinks nothing of using the death penalty as a political tool to silence dissent and settle internal scores.”
Cleverly went on to say: “Our message to that regime is clear: the world is watching you and you will be held to account, particularly by the brave Iranian people, so many of whom you are oppressing and killing.”
But he stopped short of proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), despite calls by Labour’s shadow foreign office minister Bambos Charalambous and Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Last week MPs voted in favour of proscribing the IRGC, but on Monday Cleverly told the Commons, “The future proscription or sanctions designation of individuals or entities is not something that we speculate about or discuss at the despatch box.”
Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and expert on Iran, said Cleverly’s words were “political rhetoric” and “posturing,” and she said of the Iranians, “This is endangering national security, who knows what they will do tomorrow?”
Perez-Shakdam said she understood the IRGC had not been proscribed by the British government because they feared it would lead to Iran closing all UK diplomatic outposts and “the UK would lose visibility,” but she said this was a “ridiculous argument.”
She said proscribing the IRGC would be “making a stand” and drawing a “very clear line in the sand,” warning Iran they cannot execute British nationals on trumped-up evidence and get away with it.
Victoria Coates, a senior research fellow for international affairs and national security in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, agreed and said the “muted” British response to Akbari’s “particularly brutal” execution was bound to send a chill through the thousands of Anglo-Iranians who have dual nationality.
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Cleverly met U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Washington on Tuesday, but Coates said, “Blinken has been clear that he wants to get back into the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran and I have no reason to believe Cleverly believes differently.”Perez-Shakdam said Britain had been “too weak” for too long with Iran and had followed a policy of “appeasement and containment” which had not worked.
She told The Epoch Times: “It’s the notion that if we do nothing, if we don’t retaliate, if we look the other way, then maybe Iran will stop, but it’s not in the interests of an authoritarian state to do that.”
Perez-Shakdam drew parallels with Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards Germany in the 1930s, and said: “It didn’t work out so well for us. We are literally repeating history, clearly we haven’t learned. I feel that the government is doing what Chamberlain was doing at the time and we don’t have a Churchill to kind of come and save us, but somebody needs to wake up.”
Akbari, 61, was himself a former commander in the IGRC and a veteran of Iran’s bloody 1980–1988 war with Iraq, who served as deputy defence minister from 1998 until 2003 under the moderate President Mohammad Khatami.
Khatami’s hardline successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had Akbari arrested on suspicion of spying for Britain in 2008 but he skipped bail and fled to Britain, where he took British citizenship.
Idea of Akbari Working for MI6 ‘Ludicrous’
Perez-Shakdam said it was “ludicrous” to suggest Akbari was working for MI6.She said he was probably debriefed by MI6 when he first arrived in the UK but that would be standard procedure for any former official of a foreign government.
“But to claim that he was working actively, that he was a spy, that is ludicrous,” said Perez-Shakdam, who said Akbari was no longer in the Iranian regime’s inner circle and was therefore not a source of any value for MI6.
Perez-Shakdam said the move against Akbari was “premeditated” and added: “It was well thought-out and definitely sanctioned by the leadership itself. It wasn’t the case where he just showed up and the opportunity presented itself. I think it was was very much planned, which makes it worse. It means that all along they planned to execute him.”
Labour MP Andy Slaughter told Parliament this week the Iranian government had refused to release the body of Akbari, who lived in his constituency, and had threatened to destroy his body.
Cleverly said the Iranian government’s actions “fill us all with revulsion.”
Coates, a former senior adviser for national security for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), said the refusal to release the body was “ghoulish” and she said, “Iran has a long history of using hostages for statecraft, dating all the way back to 1979 and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.”
She said Iran, Russia, and China were fast becoming an “anti-Western bloc” that are opposed to democracy and basic human rights.
“All three have terrible and unsolvable internal problems with their economies and unsatisfied populations, and if the U.S. and our allies were resolute you may not get regime change but you would get a lot of leverage over them,” Coates said.
She said Iran’s 83-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—who has been in power since 1989—had “purged” anyone who could be considered to be a reformer and there was little hope that his successor would change course.
Coates said: “The most likely successor is [Iran’s current President Ebrahim] Raisi, who might hold the reins for a few years before Khamenei’s [son] Mojtaba takes over, to make it not so obviously imperial.”
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