The Biden government will be responsible for a travesty with serious consequences if it allows itself to be pressured into lifting its designation of Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. Making the change is the price Tehran’s ayatollahs’ regime is demanding at the stalled negotiations in Vienna for a new nuclear deal with Iran.
President Joe Biden, to his credit, has been unmovable so far in rejecting the demand, despite his enthusiasm for a new deal. But signatories to the original deal done by Barack Obama also include France, the UK, Germany, the EU and Iran backers Russia and China. Some will doubtless support Tehran’s demand as a way of getting a new agreement and sanctions lifted.
It is imperative Mr Biden stands firm. Since the ayatollahs came to power in 1979, the IRGC has carried out some of the most bloodthirsty acts of ruthless terrorism seen in at least 22 countries. Declassifying it would be an outrage and shortsighted. With more than 200,000 so-called “guardians of the Islamic revolution” planted in most Iranian diplomatic missions, it has staged attacks on its own, through it notorious Quds Force or through proxy terrorist groups such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. US State Department documents accuse the Revolutionary Guard, through Quds Force, of missile proliferation, enabling Hezbollah and Hamas to pose existential threats to Israel.
Read the editorial in The Australian.