Edited by: TJVNews.com
The Biden administration is considering removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from a terror blacklist in return for a public commitment from Iran to de-escalation in the region, according to a scoop presented last Wednesday by veteran journalist Barak Ravid of Axios.com. Ravid was informed of this by three Israeli officials and two U.S. sources.
Ravid also reported in Axios that an agreement to restore the 2015 nuclear deal is nearly complete, but Iran’s demand that President Biden reverse Donald Trump’s decision to designate the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is a key remaining sticking point.
The IRGC is not only Iran’s most feared military branch, it’s also a powerful political and economic player. The terror designation means that even if Biden lifts nuclear sanctions to return to compliance with the deal, criminal penalties could still be imposed on anyone doing business with individuals or businesses connected to the IRGC, according to the Axios report by Ravid.
France24 reported that on Thursday, Republicans together with Mike Pompeo, former President Trump’s secretary of state who set the terror group designation for the IRGC, condemned the Biden administration’s attempt to re-enter the JPCOA.
“President Trump and I threw out the JCPOA and brought Iran to heel through a successful maximum pressure campaign,” Pompeo said, according to the France24 report.
“The Biden administration plans to throw it all away,” he said.
Ravid at Axios reported that the IRGC designation is not directly related to the nuclear deal, and any decision would take the form of a separate bilateral understanding between the U.S. and Iran, according to the U.S. and Israeli sources.
One idea being discussed by the Biden administration would be a public announcement that the U.S. reserves the right to redesignate the IRGC if it determines that Iran did not follow through on its pledge to de-escalate in the region, according to the Axios report. The report further indicated that the Israeli officials say the Biden administration briefed the Israeli government that such possibilities are being considered but stressed that no decisions have been made.
Two Israeli officials said that when former Vice President Mike Pence visited Israel two weeks ago, he claimed in meetings with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid that Biden planned to delist the IRGC in return for a narrower commitment not to target Americans, as was reported by Ravid.
Trump’s 2019 designation of the IRGC as an FTO was the first time a state entity was added to the list.
In response, the Israeli government released a scathing statement Friday on speculative reports that the Biden administration has plans to remove the IRGC from the US foreign terrorist organization blacklist, according to a report on the Israel National News web site.
INN also reported that in a joint statement Friday morning, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said they ‘refuse to believe’ that the US would take such a step.
“The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of people, including Americans. We refuse to believe that the United States would remove its designation as a terrorist organization, “ the Israeli leaders said
“The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are Hezbollah in Lebanon, they are Islamic Jihad in Gaza, they are the Houthis in Yemen, they are the militias in Iraq,” Bennett and Lapid added.
“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 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.
“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 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.
The fight against terrorism is a global one, a shared mission of the entire world. We believe that the United States will not abandon its closest allies in exchange for empty promises from terrorists.”
The Gulf states have appealed to the United States not to agree to remove the Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorist organizations as part of the renewal of the nuclear deal with the Tehran administration, as was reported by INN.
The Jerusalem Post reported that The United Arab Emirates are “very unhappy” with the US move toward removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, a source in Abu Dhabi said on Monday.
Some in Abu Dhabi “are in great shock,” and they view the possibility of the IRGC’s designation being removed in the same way as Israel does, the source said.
Also on Friday, i24News reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to hit what it called “Zionist bases” in Iraq.
“If Iraqi officials do not take action to remove other bases of the Zionists in that country while our security continues to be threatened from this region, we will respond without hesitation,” IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif was quoted as having said.
“It is our natural right to destroy any base from which any attack is carried out against the security of Iran, and this is a redline for us,” he added, according to the i24News report.
The comments followed a missile attack on the city of Erbil, which is located in northern Iraq, last Sunday morning, as was reported by INN.
The Saudi channel Al-Hadath reported that the missiles were launched from Iran and were in retaliation for the killing of two officers from the Revolutionary Guards in an air strike in Syria this week which was attributed to Israel.
Iran later claimed that attack was intended to target “secret Israeli bases” in Iraq, as was reported by INN.
A senior US official told The New York Times on Monday that the building struck by the Iranian missiles also served as an Israeli training facility. Later, however, New York Times correspondent Farnaz Fassihi amended her initial report and said an official in President Biden’s administration told her colleague Eric Schmidt that the earlier claim was incorrect, according to a report on the Israel National News web site.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Dennis Ross, who served as former President Obama’s Middle East advisor and as special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, criticized reports that the Biden administration is considering removing terrorism sanctions from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as part of negotiations to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, according to the INN report.
“Tying the delisting of the IRGC to Iran promising to de-escalate in the region makes us look naive. For the IRGC, which admitted this week to firing rockets into Erbil, to promise to de-escalate regionally is about as credible as Putin saying Russia would not invade Ukraine,” tweeted Ross.
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal it signed with world powers, in response to former President Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018 but has held several rounds of indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.
There have been indications recently that a deal between Iran and world powers could be reached within days. However, INN reported that the talks were suspended on Friday and no timetable has been set for their resumption.
A senior administration official told Fox News last Wednesday: “We don’t have a deal yet, and we’re not going to discuss anonymous speculation. We’re consulting with allies and partners, including Israel as we negotiate.”
Fox News also reported that he official said that President Biden “will make a decision on whether to re-enter the deal based on what’s in the best interest of American security.”
In the United States, 49 of the 50 Republican senators said they will not back the emerging new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
INN reported that they pledged to do everything in their power to reverse an agreement that does not “completely block” Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, constrain its ballistic missile program and “confront Iran’s support for terrorism.”
Last week, a bipartisan group of 21 Members of Congress, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5), Elaine Luria (VA-2), and Tom Reed (NY-23), urged the Biden administration to address concerns surrounding the looming agreement with Iran, according to the INN report.
Last month, nearly 200 House Republicans wrote to Biden and warned that any nuclear deal made with Iran without Congress’ approval “will meet the same fate” as the 2015 agreement.
“We will view any agreement reached in Vienna which is not submitted to the US Senate for ratification as a treaty — including any and all secret agreements made with Iran directly or on the sidelines of official talks — as non-binding,” the GOP lawmakers wrote to Biden, as was reported by INN.
Israel is expected to continue exerting pressure on members of Congress to turn down the Biden administration’s attempts to remove Iran’s IRGC from the national list of terrorist organizations, according to a report in Israel Hayom.
The report states that Israel will continue to publicly oppose the nuclear deal in hopes of bringing about its failure in Congress.
Unlike the Netanyahu administration, however, Bennett and Lapid are not expected to campaign against the renewed deal directly with members of Congress, according to the INN report. Whenever asked for their input, however, Israel’s political and military experts will disclose their opposition, stressing the high price that the Biden administration is willing to pay for a return to the deal.
France24 reported that at the time it was done, the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation was largely symbolic. The IRGC, its leaders and various arms have been layered with punitive US sanctions for years under multiple authorities.
Those sanctions block any assets under US jurisdiction, and forbid Americans and US-based businesses — including banks with US branches — from doing business with them, according to France24.
The terror designation adds to that the possibility of a 20-year prison sentence for anyone found “providing material support” for the IRGC.
France24 reported that Barbara Slavin, who directs the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank, said the designation was originally a political move to impress US conservatives and anti-Iran allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Lifting the designation would have “minimal” practical impact, she told AFP.
“This is a situation where the politics seem to be more important than the substance. The IRGC will remain sanctioned, along with its elite Quds Force, under multiple other authorities,” she said, according to the France24 report.
General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of the Central Command covering the Middle East, said Friday that dropping the designation would not change much on the ground, the report indicated.
On Tuesday, Fox News reported that a former counterterrorism official has warned that removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list would be a “colossal mistake” — just as the Biden administration is considering such a move as it works to restore the Iran nuclear deal.
“Removing the IRGC from the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) would be a colossal mistake, Nathan Sales, a former State Dept. counterterrorism coordinator who was part of the effort to list the IRGC in 2019, told Fox News.
“The IRGC has perpetrated terrorism around the world and has the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands,” Sales said. “Delisting the group would make it harder to prosecute its operatives and supporters, and harder to keep them from entering our country.”
(Sources: Axios.com, INN, JPost, Fox News, France 24)
