The former head of MI6 Sir John Sawers tells the BBC that he doesn't think it's necessary for the UK to ban Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Israel has called for the Iran's IRGC - the most powerful branch of its armed forces which said it launched Saturday's attack - to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Asked about pressures on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to ban the group, Sawers says: "The counter-terrorism legislation was designed to deal with terrorist groups, it's not designed to deal with states.
"Now, Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, there's no doubt about that, but a state poses a much more substantial threat than a terrorist organisation does," he tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He says that last year, a new Intelligence and Security Act was passed which gave MI5 the powers it needed to defend the country, but he points out that head of MI5 is not calling for the IRGC to be proscribed.
Calls for the IRGC to be proscribed, he says, are more of a "rhetorical position of people in various parts of the political spectrum looking for something to do without really thinking through the substance of it".
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