What’s happened: The British government has announced that it will designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) under new powers to crack down on foreign state-backed activity.

• This development was announced by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, in the House of Commons on Monday. Ms Mahmood confirmed that the draft legislation would be laid down this week and voted on by Wednesday or Thursday, formally coming into law by Friday.
• The group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI, also known as Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, IMRC), the virtual proxy which claimed responsibility for attacks on the Jewish community this past spring, has also been designated, as has the main intelligence directorate of the general staff of the armed forces of the Russian Federation Volunteer Corps, or GRU VC.
• This criminalises expressing support, assisting, or gaining material benefit from these groups with a maximum punishment of 14 years imprisonment.
• In a written statement, Dame Angela Eagle, Minister of State for Security said that the IRGC “is a central component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Its role extends far beyond that of a conventional military force. It encompasses intelligence activity, the use of proxy actors, and the projection of influence designed to advance Iranian state objectives.”
• She also specifically cited an attempted IRGC-directed assassination plot against Iran International controlled by the Quds Force’s Unit 840, and attempts by IRGC-linked cyber proxy actors targeting the UK as examples of the threat levels emanating from Tehran.
• The Conservatives have cautiously welcomed this development, with the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Dame Priti Patel stating that the decision was “long overdue”, and that “the Government must urgently explain how this designation will be enforced, and on what timetable.”
• Alongside IRGC and HAYI designation, the  government also announced £250 million over the next 3 years to boost security of the Jewish communities. 
• The funding will be split across policing priorities to tackle antisemitism including:
  • A further £86 million to the Metropolitan Police which will fund around 300 additional officers to increase police presence in Jewish communities.
  • Over £22 million to Greater Manchester Police to sustain the increase in policing presence following the tragic attack in Heaton Park last year,
  • Around £43 million to be distributed across 7 other force areas with significant Jewish communities: Hertfordshire, Essex, Northumbria, Sussex, Thames Valley, West Midlands and West Yorkshire,
  • £41 million for national policing coordination and increased antisemitism capabilities. This will fund antisemitism training for all officers in England and Wales, strengthen investigations and ensure surge resources are available to all forces.
  • £59 million to Counter-Terrorism Police to bolster protective security and counter state threats.

Context: This follows the Home Secretary being granted new powers under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026 to use proscription-like powers to designate groups working at the behest of, or in the interests of, foreign states to carry out acts which threaten the UK’s security and the safety of communities across the country.

• Jewish communal groups have for years called for IRGC proscription. Despite Conservative pledges that proscription would be forthcoming in 2023, successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries failed to do so.
• Proscription was expected to take place by 2024, but the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) instead issued a raft of sanctions against the IRGC Quds Force’s Unit 840, Quds Force officers, and other individuals implicated in the killing of dissidents in Turkey.
• It is also understood that while the Home Office was amenable to and supported proscription, the FCDO blocked the proposals out of concern that Iran might retaliate by severing diplomatic relations between London and Tehran.
• The National Security Act which criminalised assisting foreign intelligence services received Royal Assent in 2023 and was subsequently used to charge, prosecute, and convict agents working on behalf of Iran and Russia. However, belonging to or supporting the IRGC did not automatically become a criminal offence.
• Prosecutions relating to Iran have seldom referenced which specific agency or service was sponsoring the alleged plot, instead using “Iranian intelligence services” as a more generic catch-all phrase. Apart from the National Security Act, prosecutions also used Terrorism Act 2000 and Official Secrets Act 1911.
• In May 2025, Jonathan Hall KC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, argued that the Terrorism Act 2000 was designed to disrupt the influence non-state actors, and should not be used to proscribe state actors. Instead, he suggested that new proscription-like legislation should be drafted.
• While Labour had committed to “take the approach used for dealing with non-state terrorism and adapt it to deal with state-based domestic security threats” in its 2024 general election manifesto, it only committed to take firm action in the aftermath of spring 2026’s HAYI-claimed attacks against the Jewish community.
• Additional resources towards Jewish comunnities’ safety comes  following a series of attacks and the raising of the UK’s national terror threat level from substantial to severe.

Looking ahead: Now the IRGC has been designated, the relevant legislation must be properly enforced, both by Home Office police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

• In the aftermath of Hamas’s 7th October attacks, the CPS have shown a distinct reluctance to enforce Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which criminalises supporting, inviting support for, and expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation.
• In one case, the CPS initially twice refused to charge an individual who was alleged to have chanted “I love the 7th of October” and “I like an organisation that starts with H” during a pro-Palestinian protest. Charges were only approved on the police’s third approach to the CPS.
• Given past precedent and systemic resourcing challenges, it is a realistic possibility that inviting support for, or expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a designated body when done so for a prohibited purpose may not be fully enforced.

What’s happened: A US Apache helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. Both crew members were rescued alive by an unmanned sea drone. According to CENTCOM, this is the first such rescue successfully carried out by an autonomous surface vessel.

• Official Iranian media claimed that Iranian forces had not engaged in any aerial activities near the Strait, and for hours after the incident it was unclear what exactly had transpired. Then President Trump announced that the helicopter had been shot down by Iranian fire, with US officials confirming that an Iranian one-way Shahed drone had brought the helicopter down.
• In response, US forces launched a limited air strike against Iranian air defence, radar, and ground control stations near the Strait of Hormuz. An official CENTCOM statement referred to the US operation as “self-defence strikes,” the preferred term of US officials for operations that are not intended to signal an end to the US-Iran ceasefire in effect since April 8.
• The Iranians responded this morning with what they claimed were attacks on 21 US bases in the region. Iran also claimed to have shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over Iranian territory.
• US officials denied that Iran had struck 21 or even fired at 21 sites. US and regional officials described successful interceptions of Iranian missiles over Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, where the target appears to have been a large US air base at Al Azraq.
• The ceasefire that was effectively imposed by the Trump administration on Iran and Israel after one day of mutual fire on Monday held. The Iranian attempt to leverage missile launches on Israel to bail out its proxy in Lebanon failed to stop Israeli action in Lebanon, however. The IDF this morning announced further evacuation orders in southern Lebanon ahead of anticipated Israeli military strikes. Earlier today, the IDF carried out a large strike against Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese city of Tyre.
• The Israeli operations in Lebanon, including fire beyond the Litani River, carry significance on two levels. They constitute offensive action against Hezbollah, which had been attacking northern Israel in the week before, and they demonstrate definitively that the Iranian attempt this week to create a new “equation” by which Iran could fire at Israeli cities if Israel operated in Lebanon, failed to produce the result desired by Tehran.
• Also yesterday, an armed man in a military uniform crossed into Israel from Lebanon. When he was discovered by the IDF, he opened fire, but was eliminated by IDF fire.
• The UK Government is advancing legislation in Parliament that would designate the IRGC as a “threat to national security,” potentially closing a loophole that made it difficult to apply existing anti-terrorism provisions to a state-run intelligence service, rather than a non-state actor, even one backed a sovereign state, as existing legislation permits. This follows the discovery of at least 20 suspected plots to carry out attacks in the UK, especially against Jewish targets.
• This move occurs on the same day that the UK announced a raft of sanctions against six firms it alleges are complicit in enabling settler violence in the West Bank. The six associations are small fundraisers, none of which are known to have assets or activities in the UK. This announcement was accompanied by an announcement of £10 million in aid for the Palestinian Authority, that was, notably, not conditioned on any reform or an end to the Authority’s policy of paying families of convicted terrorists.

Context: The low-scale flare-up between US and Iranian forces in the Gulf, like the one day of fighting between Israel and Iran earlier this week, all occur on the backdrop of a feverish US effort to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme.

• US officials have begun leaking to American media some of the areas of agreement between the two sides in negotiations thus far. These include:
  • An Iranian commitment to suspend uranium enrichment for an extended period. The Iranians have apparently offered to suspend enrichment for ten years, while the US has demanded twenty. There was speculation the sides might agree on fifteen, though public pronouncements by President Trump indicate that the US will insist on twenty to reach an agreement.
  • Iran will “downblend” all enriched uranium. Earlier the US had insisted that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium be shipped out of the country. This stockpile is estimated at roughly 480 kg and believed to be buried in the ruins of a nuclear site destroyed by US forces in Operation Midnight Hammer last summer. If the leak is true, then none of this stockpile would leave Iran; it would, rather, be diluted (or “downblended”) in Iran with an active US role. Moreover, the agreed downblending would apply not just to the 480kg of highly enriched uranium, but to all the estimated 11 tons of uranium that has been enriched, even to much lower levels.
  • Iran would dismantle all three of its major nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordo, and Isfahan. It is unclear if Iran has actually agreed to this or whether it is still insisting on shutting down only two out of three.
  • A strict international inspections regime. Iran would have to agree to so-called “snap” inspections, which are unannounced ahead of time, by international inspectors, including at IRGC sites, where Iran had previously blocked inspectors’ access.
• It is not known what the sides may or not have agreed to as far as the two parallel blockades imposed by the US and Iran, though it is widely believed both would be lifted quickly. It is much less likely, however, that any unfreezing of Iranian assets would happen as quickly, at least according to US sources.
• Notably, none of the leaks about negotiations mention issues that were key points of contention in the lead-up to the war which began on February 28, including Iran’s support of regional proxy armies, its ballistic missile programme, or its violent suppression of protests in January of this year.
• Global energy markets continue to adjust for Iran’s blockade, now more than 100 days old, on shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. While the process is hardly painless and affects major US allies differently — Saudi Arabia and the UAE have alternative to the Strait while Qatar does not — the impact of the Iranian blockade has so far been much less catastrophic than initially feared. On the other hand, the US blockade or Iranian ports continues to grind down the Iranian economy with Israeli officials believing a breaking point there may be only weeks away.

Looking ahead: In Cairo, talks are underway between Palestinian factions under an Egyptian-led effort to reach an agreement on implementing the Gaza ceasefire and finding a workable formulation for Hamas disarmament, a key provision of the ceasefire. A successful agreement could pave the way for the “technocratic” committee to enter Gaza and bring the comprehensive agreement, which ended the war in October 2025, to the next stage.

• Israeli officials are markedly pessimistic about any real mechanism for Hamas disarmament. According to Israeli analysts, Hamas has managed to retrench and rebuild its military and governing capacities in the roughly 40% of the Gaza Strip which it still controls.
• Failure to implement the disarmament clause of the comprehensive agreement increases the likelihood that at some point the IDF will enter the rest of Gaza and forcibly disarm Hamas itself. In the war which began on October 7, 2023 and ended two years later with the comprehensive agreement, Israeli forces refrained from entering Hamas redoubts in central Gaza’s refugee camps for fear of harming Israeli hostages who were largely held in, and under, those densely populated areas. These hostages are all now home.

What’s happened: Police have opened an investigation into Iranian links to a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets in London.

• On Saturday night, Kenton United Synagogue was targeted in an arson attack; two teenagers were arrested.
• Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the Kenton fire, which did not cause any significant damage, was the third “cowardly” attack on Jewish sites in London in less than a week.
• Posting on X Mirvis said, “A sustained campaign of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community of the UK is gathering momentum…Thank God, no lives have been lost, but we cannot, and must not, wait for that to change before we understand just how dangerous this moment is for all of our society.”
• On Friday night, there was another attempted arson attack on a building  with links to the Jewish community, while last week, police arrested two suspects over an attempted arson attack on another synagogue in the capital.
• Prime Minister Starmer said, “This is abhorrent, and it will not be tolerated. Attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain.”
• The Pro-Iranian group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) or Movement of the Companions of the Right Hand of Islam, has said it is responsible, and posted a video purporting to show the attack on the Kenton synagogue on social media.

Context: Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) are a recently established Iranian proxy group. They have only been active since Israel and the US began their military campaign against Iran on 28th February 2026, and are likely part of Tehran’s retaliation strategy against Israel.

• HAYI’s activities are assessed as almost certainly being part of a broader Iranian intelligence service-led psychological warfare campaign against Israel using diaspora Jewish communities as a proxy target.
• HAYI represent a low-cost and low-risk asset which is almost certainly easy to operate with a degree of deniability, yet able to achieve significant cognitive effects on an adversary target audience, as well as divert responding local security agency resources.
• Often described as a cut-out, they primarily exist on Telegram and are not believed to have members in a traditional sense. They are assessed as likely being controlled and directed by an Iranian intelligence service, i.e. the IRGC.
• HAYI target Jewish and Zionist organisations with relatively unsophisticated arson attacks. Rather than attempting spectacular attacks to maximise casualties, HAYI tends to use or claims to have used incendiary devices or drones against these organisations, then creates videos of the attacks which are uploaded onto Iranian-linked Telegram channels.
• HAYI’s claimed attacks include:
  • An explosion at a synagogue in Liege, Belgium on 9th March.
  • A claimed attack on an unspecified site in Greece on 11th March. No evidence of any such attack has been found.
  • An arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on 13th March.
  • An explosion at a Jewish school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 14th March.
  • An arson attack on ambulances belonging to the Hatzolo charity in Golders Green, London on 23rd March. HAYI claimed that the adjacent synagogue was targeted.
  • An attack against the Bank of America in Paris was foiled by French authorities in on 29th March. The bank had been named as a potential target on HAYI’s Telegram channel.
  • A failed arson attack at a synagogue in Finchley, London, on 15th April.
  • An arson attack at Iran International’s parent company’s studios in Park Royal, London on 15th April
  • A claimed radioactive drone attack against the Israeli Embassy in Kensington, London, on 16th April. The Metropolitan Police and Israeli MFA have since confirmed that the Embassy was not attacked.
  • A failed arson attack at a Jewish charity (Jewish Futures) with links to Israel’s former offices in Hendon, London on 17th April.
  • A failed arson attack at a synagogue in Kenton, London on 18th April.
• While investigations have been led or supported by Counter Terrorism Policing, they are being treated as antisemitic hate crimes rather than terrorist attacks.
• The Metropolitan Police have said that the arson attack on Jewish Futures was “not being linked to other incidents in the northwest London area over the last week or last month’s arson in Golders Green”.
• This is likely due to a level of distance between HAYI and its assessed Iranian intelligence service sponsors, as well as the fact that the group has not yet been proscribed. If HAYI were to be proscribed then acts linked to them would likely be investigated by Counter Terrorism Policing by default. It could also make sharing their videos an offence under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
• HAYI’s Telegram channel was deactivated shortly after March’s Golders Green attack. It peaked with approximately 200 followers. Footage of its attacks are now distributed on other major Iranian regime-linked channels including Sabereen News and Almihwar News.
• HAYI’s agents are assessed as highly likely to be recruited online with promises of payment after providing evidence of following their handlers’ instructions, primarily using encrypted messaging apps such as Signal or Telegram to communicate.
• In line with other examples of Russian and Iranian-sponsored espionage and terrorist activities against the UK and Israel, recruits typically lack a particular religious or ideological affinity for those they act on behalf of, and are motivated by money.
• For example, both the Wagner Group and Iranian intelligence services have contracted local or European criminals to act on their behalf in the UK, i.e. to attack and burn down Ukrainian-owned businesses or conduct surveillance on Iran International’s studios.

Looking ahead: President Trump’s two week deadline for negotiations with Iran expires on Wednesday.  

• Whilst significant gaps remain between the US and Iranian position, it remains unclear if they will reach an agreement or the deadline will be extended or there will be a resumption of hostilities.