MI5 Directors Who Plotted IRGC ‘Terror’ Ban Exposed In Leaked Emails

MI5 Directors Who Plotted IRGC ‘Terror’ Ban Exposed In Leaked Emails Kit Klarenberg (thegrayzone.com › kit klarenberg)· The Grayzzone Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone show both a current and former MI5 director secretly lobbied for the British government’s move to label the IRGC a terrorist entity as well as the UK’s adoption of the draconian National Security Act. The correspondence reviewed here offers extraordinary insight into how the MI5 influences Downing Street and manipulates public perceptions of dubious or non-existent threats. On July 13 (bbc.com › ckg5kv7xrvlo), the government of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer officially listed the IRGC as a terrorist organization, citing supposed kidnapping and assassination plots by the Iranian military branch. Now, merely publishing (craigmurray.org.uk › palestine action proscription we fight back) Iranian-supplied casualty figures could be categorized as “terrorism,” potentially landing British citizens in prison for up to 14 years. Leaked correspondence reviewed by The Grayzone reveals that when first proposed in 2023, the push to proscribe the Iranian military branch was coordinated among the former heads of British intelligence agency MI5. Those plotting the designation included the MI5’s current Director General Ken McCallum and previous Director General Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller – who was privately credited with the passage of Britain’s draconian National Security Act. The spymasters appeared to view Labour’s then-Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as a key ally in constricting civil liberties and convincing government officials to formally designate the IRGC a terrorist entity. In private discussions, McCallum acknowledged the “direct operational benefit” of proscribing the IRGC was likely to be “modest.” The MI5 chief nonetheless considered it “sensible to contemplate” such powers, and potentially extend them to include a ban on supposedly state-affiliated factions such as the now-defunct Russian private military company Wagner. McCallum’s behind-the-scenes lobbying of Cooper and Starmer was the culmination of a wider effort by veteran MI5 officials who’d sought to “help the opposition to be ready to govern” once they took office in July 2024. Starmer and his shadow cabinet proved highly receptive to clandestine approaches from McCallum and his veteran MI5 forebears. Meanwhile, McCallum’s scaremongering about the supposed threat of China, Iran and Russia – frequently coordinated Manningham-Buller – has justified ever-greater budgets and powers for the spy agency, whose ultimate targets appear to be domestic dissidents. Keir Starmer ‘realises he needs to understand more about Whitehall’ British intelligence’s infiltration of Starmer’s administration can be traced back to a January 2023 email in which Labour’s former long-serving Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell emailed Manningham-Buller, informing her he was “thinking hard about how we help the opposition to be ready to govern if they win the next election.” O’Donnell lamented that Starmer’s office was “full of people who are, understandably, totally focussed [sic] on how to win the next election,” rather than collaborating with British intelligence officers. However, O’Donnell wrote that the Labour leader realized “he needs to understand more about how Whitehall operates” in advance of attaining power. “I hope they have reached out to you already but if not would you mind me suggesting that they do?” O’Donnell enquired. Manningham-Buller promptly forwarded his query to her latest successor as MI5 Director-General, Ken McCallum, who responded that “funnily enough,” he’d made a similar suggestion to then-shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper when they’d last met privately. “I was conscious they’d doubtless be starting to get their heads around governing/structures etc.,” McCallum explained, before