Iran’s exiled prince Reza Pahlavi, citing a gaggle of French-Iranian attorneys, says there are not any authorized obstacles for the EU to sanction the Revolutionary Guard.
“Listing this entity, which is devoted to not defending Iran or Iranians however as a substitute the ability of the dictatorship, could be a powerful and long-awaited recognition of actuality and a present of assist to my compatriots who’re combating for freedom and democracy in our nation.
Unlike the United States, which in 2019 underneath former President Donald Trump put the IRGC on its Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) record, European nations prevented the designation previously few years and prioritized diplomacy with the Islamic Republic within the hope of concluding a nuclear deal.
Many politicians in France, Germany, and different European nations have been eager to pursue the IRGC’s designation by the EU and say that it has been lengthy overdue. In January, the European Parliament permitted a decision with an absolute majority to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group. However, the EU refused to take action, with its Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell saying the transfer wants a ruling by a European court docket.
The doc cited by Pahlavi refers back to the Common Position adopted by the EU following the 9/11 assault, saying that the identical definitions used to explain individuals, teams, and entities concerned in terrorist acts apply for the IRGC.
The authorized report says a “terrorist act” shall imply any intentional act that will critically injury a rustic or a world group, critically intimidating a inhabitants, or unduly compelling a authorities and critically destabilizing or destroying the basic political, constitutional, financial, or social constructions of a rustic.
Having acknowledged the statutes that present the authorized foundation for itemizing an entity on the European record of terrorist organizations, the group of attorneys went on to supply examples of such acts by the IRGC to show that the entity deserves to be designated, like all of the others teams that the EU has blacklisted.
A noteworthy level within the doc is the often-ignored obligation of the IRGC in keeping with the Islamic Republic’s Constitution: Exporting the revolution.
“The Constitution distinguishes the mission assigned to the IRGC to proceed the Islamic Revolution, contemplating finally that the autumn of the regime of the Shah of Iran and the institution of the regime of the Islamic Republic don’t represent the tip of the Islamic Revolution.” It reads, arguing that IRGC’s mission to pursue the Islamic Revolution ideologically, past the borders of Iran could also be among the many principal causes behind its extra-territorial destabilizing actions.
Among the explanations that legally justify the designation of the outfit, the doc factors out that the IRGC has deliberate and executed quite a few operations aimed toward assassinating Iranian opposition figures. “It additionally carried out assaults towards overseas personalities and establishments that the Islamic Republic thought of on the time as enemies or opposite to its pursuits,” added the doc.
The paperwork additionally supplied an extended record of assassinations and terrorist acts tracing again to the IRGC because the instances that the EU can use to proscribe the group.
The instances embody the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar, the final prime minister of the Shah in 1991; assassination of Shahriar Shafiq, the nephew of the Shah of Iran, in 1979; the kidnapping of David Stuart Dodge, the president of the American University of Beirut, in 1982; assaults on the US Embassy and US Marines in Beirut in 1983; a wave of assaults in Paris, 1985 and 1986; the Mykonos restaurant assassinations in 1992; and the assault on AMIA in Argentina in 1994; in addition to current plots, such because the Attempted assassination of John Bolton in 2022 and the Attempted assassination of opposition determine Masih Alinejad.
A presupposition prevailing all through the textual content is that the European Union seeks to designate the IRGC and solely lacks the right authorized bases, as proclaimed by Borrell. However, plainly the reluctance to blacklist the IRGC relies on political causes.
Talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal got here to an abrupt cease in 2022, reportedly for Iran’s insistence that the IRGC be faraway from the US FTO record.