The brutal attack on noted author Salman Rushdie should be a wake-up call for the West to impose tougher sanctions against Iran and proscribe the country's elite military unit as a terrorist organisation, British prime ministerial hopeful Rishi Sunak said on Sunday.
The former Chancellor told ‘The Daily Telegraph' that attempts to revive the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), may be futile and therefore it was important to assess action against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
He spoke as the suspect in the attack on Rushdie, Hadi Matar, was on Saturday charged with attempted murder and assault and remanded without bail. Preliminary investigations suggest his sympathies with the Shia extremism and IRGC.
“The situation in Iran is extremely serious and in standing up to [Vladimir] Putin we can't take our eye off the ball elsewhere,” Sunak told the newspaper.