The Trump administration designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terror Organization on April 8.
President Trump made the announcement in a statement that read, “This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft. The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign.”
Trump added that the designation “sends a clear message to Tehran that its support for terrorism has serious consequences.”
“We will continue to increase financial pressure and raise the costs on the Iranian regime for its support of terrorist activity until it abandons its malign and outlaw behavior,” Trump said.
Those that conduct business with the IRGC could now be prosecuted for under charges of supporting a terror organization, according to National Public Radio.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at the State Department on Monday “that the IRGC amounts to a significant amount of the Iranian economy through pure kleptocracy,” meaning that “businesses and banks around the world now have a clear duty to ensure that companies with which they conduct transactions are not connected to the IRGC in any material way.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the move in a tweet, writing that Trump is “keeping the world safe from Iran aggression and terrorism.”
Thank you, President @realDonaldTrump for your decision to designate the Islamic revolutionary guards as a terrorist organization.
Once again you are keeping the world safe from Iran aggression and terrorism.— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 8, 2019
David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement, “Recognition of the IRGC as a key arm of Iran’s global terrorism strategy is vitally important to the U.S., which first designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. We applaud President Trump for taking this highly significant step.”
The Iranian parliament said they’re planning on retaliating by labeling the United States military a terrorist organization.
The IRGC is responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans during the Iraq War – which violated a truce at the time between the U.S. and Iran – and has been involved in terror attacks such as the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 Americans.
