In Comprehensive Report, US Lawmaker Urges Allies, EU To Designate IRGC
US Republican lawmaker Claudia Tenney has released a comprehensive report on the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, calling on US allies to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group.
Representative Tenney (Rep-NY) released the reportaccompanied by a bi-partisan resolution on Thursday, detailing the IRGC’s “terrorist activities around the world” and urging Washington’s partners and allies to join the United States in labeling the body as a terrorist organization.
Several groups, including the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, United Against Nuclear Iran, and Foundation for Defense of Democracies, contributed to the 20-page report.
Former US officials, namely former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates and former Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams, also shared their views and experiences about the IRGC in the report.
“Combatting the IRGC is one of the most urgent national security agenda items today,” said Congresswoman Tenney. “Congress is united in opposing the IRGC’s terror campaign. This designation will increase pressure and send a clear message to the Islamic Republic that its terror campaigns must stop,” she noted.
Tenney’s bipartisan resolution specifically urges the European Union to expeditiously designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization under the European Union’s Common Position 931.
The former US envoy on Iran, Abrams, said in the report: “The IRGC is a global threat that requires a global response. If the IRGC can run free in Europe and Asia it can threaten Americans and our allies, move more money and weapons, and build its strength. We need to press every friendly nation to close the gaps and loopholes that allow the IRGC to survive and thrive as a danger to all of us—and as the main oppressor of the Iranian people.”
Pompeo, a vocal critic of Iran, said: “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a militant terrorist organization that answers only to Supreme Leader Khamenei, who uses the IRGC to spread terror and mayhem in the name of his theocratic regime."
The report breaks down the threats into domestic, as it crushes voices of dissent in the dictatorship, and regional and global threats.
The comprehensive report lists Middle East states where the militia is carrying out its operations, funding other affiliated leaders and groups in internal struggles or civil wars.
“The IRGC funds belligerents that support the Iranian regime and promote similar schools of extremist religious thought,” the report stated, enumerating the group’s activities in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, as well as Gaza, Judea, and Samaria – which encompasses the entire West Bank.
By attacking dissidents directly or working through proxies to fuel terrorism, the threats go far beyond the Middle East, acknowledged the authors who went on to list some of the terrorist acts by the IRGC, including the attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in July 1994, assassinations at Mykonos Restaurant in Germany in September 1992, and plotting to assassinate former National Security Advisor John Bolton in August 2022.
The US lawmaker’s report also points to the Islamic Republic’s supply of weapons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine as another global threat posed by the IRGC. “Russia and Iran announced a $1 billion deal to build a factory in Russia to produce up to 6,000 Iranian-designed drones to use against Ukraine in Russia’s war of aggression,” the report claimed.
The international community must unite against the threat, wrote Michael Makovsky, the CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
“Today, the IRGC is the most dangerous terrorist group on the planet, with the history, capability, and intention to conduct attacks across six continents,” he said.
