The administration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization in an unprecedented step aimed at escalating Washington’s campaign of “maximum pressure.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration is preparing to announce the move as early as tomorrow.
It would mark the first time the US has designated a branch of the armed forces of a foreign government as a terrorist group.
Photo: AFP
The US Department of State declined to comment on the report on Friday evening.
It was unclear how much concrete difference the terrorist designation of the IRGC would make, experts said.
It is already heavily sanctioned by the US as a terrorist supporter and Iran is designated a state sponsor of terrorism.
“It is hard to imagine a bigger sanctions stick than that,” said Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the department and author of The Art of Sanctions.
“Frankly, I still don’t believe that this is consistent with the intent of the underlying law, which was to target non-state actors,” he added.
The move, if carried out, is likely to increase trepidation on the part of foreign companies when it comes to trading with or investing in Iran.
The IRGC controls a large slice of the Iranian economy, and the US treasury and state departments have stressed that the onus is on foreign companies to find out if the partners they deal with in Iran are tied to sanctioned groups.
“This is uncharted territory. We haven’t done this before,” said Ariane Tabatabai, an Iran expert at Rand Corp. “It is a sign the US is prepared to fully escalate ‘maximum pressure,’ but what is lacking is a clear endgame. There is a confusion of means and ends. The administration sees the damage inflicted as success, but that’s not how it works.”
The Wall Street Journal report said that senior Pentagon officials were apprehensive about the move, fearing it might provoke a backlash against US troops in the region.
Mohammed Ali Shabani, an Iran expert at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said that if the designation is announced, the Iranian government is likely to respond in kind.
It marks an attempt by Iran hawks in the administration to box in future decisionmaking on Iran, he added.
“The point of all of this is to constrain Trump’s dealmaking instinct as much as possible and make it as difficult as possible for the next US president to return to sanity on Iran,” he said.
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