Sen. Coons Questions Idea Of Removing Iran Guards From Terror List

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is a “dangerous and destabilizing actor” and it is not clear why the United States would remove their terrorist designation, Senator Chris Coons told Iran International on Monday.

In the final stages of negotiations to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, Tehran has been demanding that the US remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. The Biden Administration has not decided yet, but most Senate Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers have opposed such a move.

Sen. Coons said that although he does not have full information on the matter, “it would have to be something very significant” to warrant IRGC’s delisting.

Regarding the Islamic Republic in general, Coons said it is doing at least three bad things: Consistently and at large scale repressing the human rights of the Iranian people; exporting violence in the region through support for Hezbollah, for Houthis, through the IRGC and other groups…and continuing to develop ballistic missile technology that threatens the whole region.

Sen. Coons, who is a close supporter of President Joe Biden and is not opposed to his policy of reviving the JCPOA, said that besides nuclear enrichment, in three other areas Tehran’s “behavior has got worse, not better over the last couple of years.”

He maintained that these issues should be addressed in future negotiations, because focusing just on the nuclear issue “would be a miss.”

“A successful deal should address a whole spectrum of what they do, all of them. That does not seem to be on the agenda of what Iran is willing to discuss,” the Senator added.