The decision is making its way within the European Union (EU). The Twenty-Seven are planning to place the body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards on their list of terrorist entities, at a time when the Iranian regime is increasing death sentences and executions to suppress the uprising which is shaking it. While a similar project exists in the United Kingdom, the discussion in Brussels shows the will of European states to increase their pressure on Tehran, four months after the start of the bloody repression of the movement sparked by the death in custody of the young Kurd Mahsa Amini. In Iran, four men have already been hanged in December 2022 and early January, in connection with the protests. About fifty risk the same fate.
“Politically, it’s time for hardening, you have to know how to be firm without breaking relations, by hitting an organization placed at the heart of the system”, said a diplomatic source, aware that the initiative would mark a further deterioration in relations, already very tense, between Tehran and the European capitals. To date, the European list of terrorist entities includes around twenty organizations, including Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and the armed wing of Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran.
According to our information, several states, including Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, are campaigning in favor of such an initiative. Their representatives asked the European Council’s legal service for its opinion in order to prepare the most solid decision possible, that is to say indisputable before the European Court of Justice. “Classifying the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization is politically significant and makes sense”German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock pleaded on Tuesday, January 10, on her Twitter account.
Caution from France
France, long unfavorable to this option, is not opposed to it and “is working with its European partners on new sanction measures, without excluding any a priori”, informed the Quai d’Orsay. The question is particularly delicate for French diplomacy, anxious not to break with Tehran at a time when seven French nationals are being held in Iranian prisons. At a time also when the Iranian authorities are stepping up protests after the publication of a series of caricatures of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in Charlie Hebdo.
“The fact that the United Kingdom and Germany are moving encourages the French to move”, observes an expert. In the first weeks of the uprising, before agreeing to sanction Tehran, France seemed to favor restraint, in particular in order to maintain the possibility of closing negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program. The United Kingdom, Germany and France are in close contact on the issue, because of their participation, with China, Russia, and the United States, in the negotiations intended to save the nuclear agreement of 2015, denounced by Donald Trump in 2018. But the talks have stalled after almost hitting the target in August.
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