January 13, 2023
The Coalition is calling on the Albanese government to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety as a terrorist organisation after the Australian Signals Directorate said it had targeted Australian organisations with Ransomware attacks.
In an answer to a question on notice from Tasmanian Liberal senator Claire Chandler, ASD replied: “Yes – Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps affiliated actors have targeted Australian organisations.”
Britain is preparing to formally declare the IRGC a terrorist organisation which would make it a criminal offence to belong to the group. The US took the step back in 2019.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said “under our UN and autonomous sanctions, Australia has imposed targeted sanctions on the IRGC as a whole since 2012, as well as a number of IRGC-linked persons and entities.” But the Coalition is pushing the government to go further.
Senator Chandler told The Australian it was “absolutely clear that the IRGC is involved in a wide range of activity which represents a threat to Australia and Australians”.
“Other nations have been forthright in acknowledging this threat and open with the public about IRGC actions targeting their citizens. Australia’s government has not, and that should change,” she said.
“Officials in the UK and EU are moving towards proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation and the Australian government should be taking the same path.”
Opposition spokesman for Cyber Security James Paterson said that the former Coalition government had targeted cyber offences in its Magnitsky sanctions regime.
“This serious revelation should require a strong message from the Albanese government, and those tools are already available to them to use,” he said.
A number of submissions made last year to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee inquiry into the human rights implications of the recent violence in Iran also argued in favour of listing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
Oved Lobel, a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, wrote in The Australian this week that once the UK listed the IRGC then Germany, the rest of Europe and Canada were likely to follow suit.
“Listing the IRGC under the Criminal Code would send an important symbolic message to anti-regime Iranians as well as our allies, demonstrating that Australia will no longer lag in condemning or sanctioning the IRGC, as it has to date,” he said.
“It also would have a practical impact, restricting and punishing the IRGC in co-ordination with allies and partners around the world.”
