Meeting in Brussels on Thursday 29 January, EU foreign ministers decided to add the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the EU’s list of terrorist organisations, in response to the “senseless” and “unsustainable” repression faced by the Iranian people. The formal decision should be adopted in the next few days.
This listing will put them “on the same footing with Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Daech” explained the High Representative of the Union, Kaja Kallas. She added that: “If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as a terrorist”. According to Ms Kallas, “any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working towards its own demise”.
“This decision sends out a strong political signal that is long overdue”, emphasised the German minister, Johann David Wadephul, whose country pushed for this listing. According to a European source, the inclusion of the Corps had been under discussion for seven years.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its auxiliary forces are the henchmen of the Iranian regime. It is they who commit acts of unprecedented brutality against their own people, who execute their own citizens for daring to demonstrate in the streets. They are responsible for Iran’s destabilising role in the region. They are behind attempted attacks in Germany and Europe. In short: they have blood on their hands”, said the German minister.
According to the Dutch minister, David van Weel, at a time when the Corps is already subject to EU sanctions, this listing is “a political signal, but one with real consequences” and one that really increases the pressure on the Iranian regime.
If the European Parliament, which had long been calling for such a listing, immediately welcomed the EU Council’s decision, Iran described it as a “major strategic error”.
Sanctions against those responsible for the repression. The ministers also adopted measures against fifteen individuals and six entities linked to the repression of the opposition and the blocking and censorship of the internet.
The Iranian Interior Minister, Eskandar Momeni, the Prosecutor General Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, the Chief of the Public Security Police, Seyed Majid Feiz Jafari, the Commander of Iran’s Special Anti-Terrorist Forces (NOPO), Mohsen Ebrahimi, the Head of the Protection and Intelligence Organisation of the Iranian Law Enforcement Forces, Mohsen Fathizadeh, and officials from the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Internet Blocking Censoring Committee have all been sanctioned.
The Masaf Institute, which “plays a key role in operations aimed at silencing the political opposition”, the Audiovisual Media Regulatory Authority (SATRA), the government body responsible for monitoring online and video content published in Iran, and the Seraj Cyberspace Organization, set up by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to support the IRGC apparatus, are all subject to restrictive measures. The same applies to the Working Group for Determining Instances of Criminal Content (WGDICC), which is responsible for filtering and censoring the Internet in Iran, the company Yaftar, which collaborates with this working group, and the software company Douran Software Technologies, which are involved in Internet blocking and censorship activities.
To see the sanctions: https://aeur.eu/f/khe
No impunity. With these measures, the Europeans wanted to show that the repression, which is said to have resulted in at least 6,000 deaths – some sources put the figure at 30,000 – could not go unpunished.
“It is clear what we see: the death toll in the protests that were in Iran and the means that were taken by the regime are really severe. That is why we are also sending a clear message that if you are suppressing people, it has a price, and you will be also sanctioned for this”, stressed Ms Kallas.
“The unbearable repression of the Iranian people’s peaceful revolt cannot go unanswered. The incredible courage of the Iranian men and women who have been the targets of this violence cannot be in vain”, explained the French Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot. He pointed out that the sanctions and listing were also a call to the Iranian authorities to release the prisoners “who, by the tens of thousands, have been thrown into the regime's prisons”, to put an end to executions, to restore access to communications and the internet, and to give the Iranian people back the ability to decide for themselves and by themselves about their own future. “No one else can do it for them”, he warned.
Ms Kallas said that the ministers had made it clear that Iran must release all those unjustly detained, including EU citizens.
Call to do more, but not to strike. The Swedish minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, wanted the EU to go further. “We must consider other measures, and I will invite the Commission to tell us what they are”, she announced ahead of the EU Council, explaining that it was necessary to examine in depth the different measures that the EU could take to support, in various ways, “these courageous men and women who are currently fighting for their rights in Iran”.
According to Spain’s José Manuel Albare, “it is the responsibility, indeed the obligation, of the European Union to use all the instruments at its disposal to put an end to this repression, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian people”. The High Representative explained that the EU must be prepared to increase pressure on the authorities and continue to support Iranian civil society.
Asked about possible US strikes on Iran in retaliation for the situation, Ms Kallas said that the region “did not need another war”.
Support for Russia. In addition, the EU has adopted sanctions against four individuals and six entities as part of the regime of measures linked to Iran’s military support for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
The import-export trading company Sahara Thunder, which “acts as a shell company” for the Iranian Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), and its CEO, Hossein Bakshayesh, have been sanctioned. Arsang Safe Trading Co, which works with the company, is subject to restrictive measures, as is Pishgaman Tejarat Rafi Novin Co. - for “its links with entities involved in Iran’s missile programme”, the MODAFL Asia Marine Crown Agency shell company and Khojir Missile Development and Production, which “directs Iran’s ballistic missile programme”.
The private company Fanavaran Sanat Ertebatat Company (FSE), which supplies critical electronic components and jamming-resistant guidance systems, and its shareholders Hossein Hemsi and Armin Ghorsi Anbaran have also been sanctioned, as has Amir Radfar, director of the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group (SBIG), which manufactures ballistic missiles.
To see the Implementing Act: https://aeur.eu/f/khf (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)