For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has en­dorsed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to clas­si­fy Hamas, Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah as ter­ror­ist groups, say­ing it is a means of en­abling the au­thor­i­ties to pre­vent fi­nanc­ing to armed groups.

Re­spond­ing to the de­ci­sion dur­ing CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Grif­fith re­ferred to sim­i­lar is­sues faced dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter when ter­ror group ISIS be­gan a se­ries of of­fen­sives in the Mid­dle East.

Grif­fith not­ed that a Unit­ed Na­tions frame­work pol­i­cy tar­get­ing the group through sanc­tions and dis­rupt­ing fi­nanc­ing ac­tiv­i­ties was ac­cept­ed by the then gov­ern­ment, not­ing that the lat­est de­ci­sion was nec­es­sary to pre­vent ter­ror­ist groups from re­ceiv­ing fund­ing.