A bipartisan parliamentary committee is set to call on the federal government to list Iran’s brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, as new evidence emerges of Iran’s attempts to strong-arm Iranian Australians.
Coalition and Greens MPs on the Senate’s standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade are expected to form a rare unity ticket to recommend the move in a report due on Wednesday, even as a top legal expert questioned its legality.
The Senate inquiry into human rights violations in Iran received hundreds of written submissions and heard impassioned testimony from Iranian Australians urging the government to do more to punish the regime in Tehran for its brutal crackdown on women’s rights and pro-democracy protesters over recent months.
Liberal senator and committee chair Claire Chandler and Greens foreign affairs spokesman and committee member Jordon Steele-John have both publicly called on the government to list the Revolutionary Guard – a much-feared government agency tasked with defending the regime against internal and external threats – as a terrorist organisation.
A committee source said it was almost certain the report would recommend the move.
A Revolutionary Guard affiliate, the Basij Resistance Force, has been at the forefront of the regime’s clampdown on unrest sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Read the article by Matthew Knott and Paul Sakkal in The Sydney Morning Herald.