FILE PHOTO: British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly walks outside Downing Street as he attends the British cabinet’s weekly meeting, in London, Britain February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Thursday announced plans for sweeping new powers to sanction the Iranian government in response to what he said were 15 credible Iranian plots to kill or kidnap British and UK-based individuals.

The new sanctions regime will expand the criteria for sanctioning Iranian individuals and entities to include Iran’s “malign influence in the Middle East and beyond,” its proliferation of weapons, its undermining of democracy and Iran’s threats to the UK and partner nations, according to the announcement. The UK’s current sanctions regime against Iran is focused largely on its violations of human rights.

Speaking in Parliament on Thursday to announce the changes, Cleverly described Iran’s growing international belligerency in the face of domestic mass protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in regime custody after she was arrested by Iran’s Morality Police for allegedly failing to wear her hijab in the legally-required manner.

“Since protests began in Iran in September of last year, the Iranian regime has dramatically increased its attempts to silence dissent,” Cleverly said. “While our police, intelligence and security agencies have been confronting these threats for many years, their seriousness and intensity has increased in recent months. In the last 18 months, there have been at least 15 credible threats to kill or kidnap British nationals and others living in the UK by the Iranian regime.”

Cleverly cited the example of the independent Iran International media network, which in February announced it was suspending operations in the UK in the face of Iran’s threats against its journalists.

“It is intolerable that any media outlet should be forced to leave the United Kingdom because of the Iranian regime and its threats to kidnap or murder their journalists,” he said.

In addition to the new sanctions powers, the British government also announced the sanctioning of 13 Iranian individuals and entities under the existing sanctions regime, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Cyber Defence Command. In April the UK announced sanctions against the IRGC in its entirety, a move that has so far been resisted by the European Union. The US has imposed financial sanctions on the IRGC since 2007 and in 2020 designated it as a foreign terrorist organization.

The UK’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the Labour Party welcomed the new measures.

The UK’s new sanctions moves come as the US, the UK and its partners attempt to coordinate their response to Iran in the absence of a negotiated return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the Iran nuclear deal – as well as Iran’s growing support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Reuters reported in June that UK and EU diplomats have informed their Iranian counterparts that they will retain ballistic missile sanctions against Iran when those sanctions expire under the terms of the JCPOA in October. The diplomats reportedly cited Iran’s support to Russia as well as Iran’s own violations of the JCPOA. Since 2019 Iran has been in violation of various terms of the deal after the US reimposed sanctions on Iran and withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. In February the International Atomic Energy Agency detected uranium enriched to 83.7% purity at Iran’s Fordow nuclear site — just shy of the 90% purity regarded as “weapons-grade” and vastly exceeding the 3.67% limit of the nuclear deal.