The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has backed the European Union’s move to put the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on the “terrorist list” after a deadly crackdown on mass protests.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: “If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as a terrorist.”
Shahin Gobadi, a member of the NCRI’s foreign affairs committee, told Brussels Signal that the decision was long overdue. “We have been pushing for this for a long time. In our view, the decision is at least three decades late,” he said.
Maryam Rajavi, President of the NCRI, described the IRGC as the regime’s “central instrument of violence and repression” and “the principal vehicle for the export of terrorism, fundamentalism and regional warmongering”.
The EU is also expected to approve visa bans and asset freezes on 21 Iranian state bodies and officials, reportedly including the interior minister, in response to the brutal repression of the protests across the country.
The IRGC and several of its senior commanders are already subject to EU sanctions and adding the organisation to the terror blacklist is expected to have a limited practical impact.
The move carries symbolic weight for the NCRI, though.
“More than four decades of appeasement and protracted debate are enough. The decision to designate the IRGC, an institution synonymous with ignorance and crime, must no longer be delayed,” Rajavi said.
The NCRI is now pushing for the dissolution of the IRGC: “Just as the Iranian people once demanded the dismantling of the Shah’s criminal SAVAK, they now resolutely insist on the dissolution of the IRGC.”
Iranian authorities admitted that more than 3,000 people were killed during the protests but say the majority were members of the security forces or bystanders killed by “rioters”.
