US congress pressures EU to proscribe Iran's IRGC

More than 130 members of the US Congress have fired a “warning shot” to the EU in a letter calling for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be declared a terrorist organisation and proscribed.

Addressed to the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the group said Iran was a “leading state sponsor of terror” that has for decades “freely and openly carried out plots targeting citizens in countries across the EU”.

As US President Joe Biden prepared to arrive in Northern Ireland on Tuesday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the conversation in Washington was centred on Iran.

Four years after the US placed the IRGC on its list of foreign terrorist entities, Congressmen and women from across the political spectrum claimed the EU’s hesitancy to follow suit could compromise freedom of speech.

“We strongly urge you, and your foreign affairs ministerial colleagues, to make the decision to fully sanction, penalise and delegitimise the IRGC, to help prevent them from further threatening democracy and freedom in the United States, Europe and around the world,” the open letter read.

The members said while they appreciated the complexities behind any decision on a terrorist designation, “given the growing threat Iran poses to EU member states and their citizens, we urge you to treat this issue with the utmost urgency”.

“We believe there is an abundance of evidence available to the EU to provide the necessary basis for a terror designation for the IRGC, particularly given the European Court of Justice’s ruling that investigations and prosecutions outside of the EU may be used as evidence to support additions to the terror list,” they wrote in the letter dated April 10.

The listed several terrorist plots uncovered in Europe that authorities had linked to Iran, including a case of planned attacks on synagogues in Germany.

Signatories of the bipartisan letter included Kathy Manning, vice member of the US House foreign affairs committee, Tom Kean, chairman of the Europe subcommittee and Bill Keating, member of the Europe subcommittee.

The UK government is also under increasing pressure to place the IRGC in the same category as Isis, Al Qaeda and Hamas.