Brussels is set to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, the EU’s foreign policy chief said on Thursday, as tensions mount between Tehran and the West amid fears of US military action against the Middle Eastern nation.
The move to blacklist the elite force, which reports directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, comes amid a brutal crackdown by the Iranian authorities on protesters, which some estimate has killed tens of thousands of people and has escalated into the most serious threat to the Islamic regime in decades.
“We are putting new sanctions on the list, and I also expect that we agree on listing the [IRGC] on the terrorist list,” Kaja Kallas told reporters ahead of a meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers in Brussels. “If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as a terrorist.”
The shift follows a change of position in several EU countries. France, Italy and Spain dropped their resistance earlier this week to adding the IRGC to the bloc’s list of designated terrorist groups, which include Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas.
Paris, Rome and Madrid had previously warned that blacklisting the IRGC could close off diplomatic channels to Tehran.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told reporters that Paris’ support for fresh EU sanctions – which will also hit more than twenty Iranian individuals and entities with asset freezes and travel bans – was “an appeal” to Tehran to release political prisoners, end executions, and restore internet access to the country’s 90 million citizens.
“There can be no impunity for the crimes committed,” Barrot said, adding that Iran should also “immediately” allow two French citizens seeking sanctuary at the country’s embassy in Tehran to leave the country.
Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said that Madrid “condemns the Iranian regime’s senseless repression of its own citizens” and will “join any sanctions proposed against the Iranian regime, including those that designate the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists”.
Kallas also pushed back against the suggestion that blacklisting the IRGC would preclude a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
“The estimate is that, still, the diplomatic channels will remain open,” she said, adding that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will not be sanctioned under the new measures.
On Tuesday, Iran had warned of “destructive consequences” if the EU went ahead with the terrorist designation, state media reported.
Sources: CNA, EURACTIC