President Joe Biden has chosen not to waive the designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist. It’s the right decision. The possibility of such a waiver should never have even been up for debate in the first place.
Still, this is good news. In April, Biden confirmed to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that the United States would retain the IRGC’s designation. Bennett echoed this on Twitter.
The announcement matters because Iran had been pushing for a waiver as the price for accepting any renewal of the 2015 nuclear accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The JCPOA broke down after the Trump administration withdrew from it in 2018. Talks on restoring the agreement are underway in Vienna.
Whether or not the deal is renewed, it’s very good news that the IRGC will remain on the terrorist list. The IRGC is most plainly a terrorist organization of special scale and aggressive ambition. After all, the IRGC’s Quds Force covert action unit has spent nearly two years plotting to assassinate former Trump administration officials it despises for their role in Donald Trump’s Iran policy. The Quds Force has been directed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to exact retribution against a high-profile U.S. official in retaliation for the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed the force’s former commander, Qassem Soleimani. Like its civilian Iranian intelligence counterparts, the IRGC takes this directive seriously.
Unfortunately, so also is the Biden administration addicted to the idea of getting the JCPOA back on track at any cost.
As the Washington Examiner exclusively reported in early March, the Biden administration has even failed to indict at least two IRGC officers publicly for their plot to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook also face significant Iranian threats, requiring Diplomatic Security Service protection at a cost approaching $2.2 million per month.
Even if Biden has now come to the right conclusion, it took too long and too much silliness to get here. Biden administration officials had apparently asked Iran to commit to stop the assassination plots against U.S. officials in exchange for waiving IRGC’s terrorist designation. Iran refused. Of course, such a commitment would almost certainly have been worthless even if Iran had agreed to it. That administration officials nevertheless persisted in seeking that most mild of concessions shows just how desperate they are to restore the JCPOA. That Iran refused to make such a commitment shows how confident its regime is that it holds all the cards.
All that said, the IRGC’s motive for seeking this waiver was not primarily rooted in its terrorist enterprises. The key concern for the IRGC is that this designation makes it far riskier for major multinational corporations to do business with interests linked to the IRGC or that serve as fronts for its vast economic portfolio. The legal penalties for dealing with a foreign terrorist organization are, after all, just about the most serious of any sanctions-busting offense. Considering that the IRGC has tentacles reaching into just about every major sector of the Iranian economy (including telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, and construction), a U.S. terrorist designation is more than just a minor inconvenience. But the IRGC wants — indeed, to some degree needs — European, Chinese, and Russian businesses to invest in developing its economic interests. The sharp bite of sanctions imposed on Iran by the Trump administration has depleted the IRGC’s ability to export the Islamic revolution. The sanctions have also jeopardized the IRGC’s means of supporting the families of suicide bombers and other vested interests with the patronage that they have come to expect.
The Biden administration should be putting far more economic pressure on Tehran so as to force it to choose between regime-threatening domestic protests or a more concessionary stance in nuclear negotiations. That’s likely the only way to reach a new nuclear accord that provides for true regional security. Regardless, the IRGC’s inability to escape its deserved designation as a terrorist organization is at least one positive.
