For years Britain has fought Islamist extremism like a doctor treating recurring fevers while refusing to diagnose the infection.

Every attack has been followed by another inquiry. Every plot by another review. Every warning by another promise that lessons had been learned. Yet the underlying problem has remained remarkably untouched.

The Government’s decision to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Companions of the Right is therefore more than another national security announcement. It signals a long-overdue recognition that Britain is confronting something far more organised than isolated acts of terrorism. It is confronting an ideological ecosystem.

The IRGC was never simply another branch of the Iranian state. It is the regime’s praetorian guard, intelligence apparatus, economic empire and revolutionary export mechanism rolled into one. Wherever Tehran has projected influence, armed proxies or political intimidation, the fingerprints of the IRGC are rarely far behind. Its objective has never been confined to defending Iran. It exists to defend the Islamic Revolution wherever the regime believes its interests require it.

Companions of the Right illustrates just how far that doctrine has evolved.

Reports suggest the organisation was established as a contingency network, designed to carry out acts of violence across Western capitals should the Islamic Republic itself come under serious threat. That........

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