Despite a new report detailing the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) working with Hezbollah to establish weapons workshops in Syria and a persistent IRGC threat to “avenge” Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani by targeting former and current U.S. officials, the Biden Administration continues to decline opportunities to emphatically disavow the notion that the Islamic Republic can negotiate away part of the IRGC’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation, while retaining only its Quds Force on the FTO list. Iran has reportedly demanded that the U.S. delist the group as a precondition of any nuclear accord.
In an op-ed published in The National Interest this week, UANI policy director Jason Brodsky observed the impossibility of any accommodation of the Iranian regime on the IRGC, such as creating artificial distinctions between its units, and further argued that Tehran is “dragging out the negotiations with world powers to advance its nuclear program while shortening and weakening the existing Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)…”
“…The Quds Force is not just some special terrorist unit walled off from the IRGC’s other missions. Rather, it is at the beating heart of IRGC resourcing, despite its smaller size, and other IRGC components, like the Aerospace Force, supplement its efforts. Attempts to segregate the Quds Force from its IRGC parent organization, therefore, do not survive close scrutiny.”
Historically, U.S.-designated FTOs have been delisted based on their conduct. In those cases where they were not, for example with the Houthis in 2021, the organization in question doubled down on terrorism after its removal from the FTO list. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has alluded that the Iranian regime understands ‘what it needs to do’ but has not clarified what this means. Other groups have had to demonstrate for more than a decade that they have forsaken terrorist activities. Brodsky believes that “the IRGC should be subject to this same high standard.”
Source » iranprobe