Israeli leaders condemned reports that the United States is considering removing the terrorist designation from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in exchange for a public commitment to deescalating tensions.
The IRGC “is a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of people, including Americans,” a joint statement from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid read. “We refuse to believe that the United States would remove its designation as a terrorist organization.”
Israel’s statement, which was released by the Embassy of Israel on Friday morning, came two days after Axios reported that the Biden administration is considering making the change in designation because it has remained a key sticking point in the negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement. The State Department had told the outlet that no decision had been made on this and “any speculation to the contrary is simply uninformed.”
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“They are an integral part of the brutal machine of oppression in Iran. Their hands have on them the blood of thousands of Iranians and the crushed soul of the Iranian society,” the Israeli leaders added. “The attempt to delist the IRGC as a terrorist organization is an insult to the victims and would ignore documented reality supported by unequivocal evidence. We find it hard to believe that the IRGC’s designation as a terrorist organization will be removed in exchange for a promise not to harm Americans.”
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief who has acted as a coordinator for the talks, announced last week that the negotiations have been placed on “pause” due to “external factors.”
The pause came as Russia, which is a part of the negotiations, demanded that the new deal shield its trade with Iran from sanctions imposed against the country as a result of its war in Ukraine, though it has since softened that stance.
“It is not closed. It is not finished. We are urging all parties to do what they need to, and there’s a lot of onus on Iran to decide whether in fact it wants to move forward or not, come into compliance, and ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Fox News.
Last weekend, Iran launched a missile attack in Irbil, an area of northern Iraq where U.S. forces are stationed, and Iran claimed responsibility for the attack. The country said it was in retaliation for an Israeli strike days earlier that killed two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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“The IRGC are responsible for attacks on American civilians and American forces throughout the Middle East, including in the past year. The IRGC were behind plans to assassinate senior American government officials,” the Israeli leaders said. “The IRGC were involved in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, they destroyed Lebanon and they are brutally oppressing Iranian civilians. They kill Jews because they are Jews, Christians because they are Christians, and Muslims because they refuse to surrender to them.”
The IRGC “is the centerpiece of Iranian bad behavior,” U.S. Central Command head Frank McKenzie told reporters Friday morning when asked about the report, though he said he’s not sure about what impact removing the designation would have.
