(West
Dunbartonshire) (SNP): At the weekend, the Ukrainian Government
and peoples commemorated the holodomor—the genocide inspired by
the Government of Joseph Stalin. During those celebrations, as
the Minister rightly said, the Russian Federation launched its
largest air attack on Kyiv to date, which included 75
Iranian-made Shaheds towards the capital. Part of the financing
of the Iranian regime comes from the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps Back in January,
Ministers intimated to the House and to Members that they were
considering proscribing the revolutionary guard, a financer of
the Iranian regime that is feeding the Russian Federation’s
military might. When will the Minister’s Government stop
considering and start proscribing it?
The Minister for Armed Forces (): These are not conversations
to which I am directly privy, so I am loth to offer detail that I
do not have. Suffice it to say that the debate is more nuanced
than the hon. Gentleman implies in his question, but I suspect he
knows that. When we proscribe an organisation such as the
IRGC, which is so integral to the Iranian state,
we can make it quite hard to have any sort of communication with
the Iranian state, but those are matters for colleagues in the
Foreign Office. I will bring his question to their attention, and
encourage them to write to him or seek to respond in some other
way.
