What terrorist delisting of Iran’s IRGC would mean for US interests, allies in Middle East

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Updated 24 March 2022
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What terrorist delisting of Iran’s IRGC would mean for US interests, allies in Middle East

  • Tehran reportedly pressing Biden team in Vienna to remove sanctions against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
  • Financial lifeline would enable IRGC to plunge vast new swathes of Middle East into chaos, conflict

WASHINGTON D.C.: US President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly in the final stages of an attempt to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Insiders claim that Tehran is insisting that Washington agree to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

The American negotiating team, led by Special Representative for Iran Rob Malley, believes that it can obtain the concessions and guarantees from the Iranian government necessary for preventing it from becoming a nuclear weapons threshold power.

Analysts think a nuclear-capable Iran would significantly empower the IRGC and likely supercharge its asymmetric-warfare campaign throughout the Middle East.




A woman holds up an illustration of a portrait of Qasem Soleimani during a memorial service marking the second anniversary of his death at a school in Beirut. (File/AFP)

Iran has reportedly been pressing the Biden team to agree to an almost total overhaul of not only economic sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program, but those connected to terrorist activities specifically linked to the IRGC.

Sources report that one of Tehran’s conditions to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name of the nuclear deal, is the removal of the terrorist designation, which equates the IRGC with Daesh, and Al-Qaeda.

The Biden administration has not confirmed the leaks but has made clear it hopes to restore the JCPOA. But there are signs that it may acquiesce to Tehran’s demands.

Critics point to what they see as a serious flaw in the Biden administration’s strategic reasoning.




An Iranian missile launched during a joint military drill dubbed the ‘Great Prophet 17,’ in the southwest of Iran. (AFP/Iran's Revolutionary Guard via SEPAH NEWS)

Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Arab News that the deal under consideration by the Biden administration would neither prevent Iran from eventually developing nuclear weapons nor dissuade the IRGC from conducting terror attacks against American and allied interests.

He said: “Biden officials and, before them, (former US President Barack) Obama officials promised us repeatedly that the nuclear deal would not prevent the United States from working to contain the IRGC on the ground in the Middle East.

“Clearly, the nuclear deal is about much more than nuclear weapons. It will remove all meaningful restrictions on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, thus paving the way to Iran’s early acquisition of a nuclear bomb.”

The IRGC was founded as an ideological custodian of Iran’s 1979 revolution and entrusted with defending the Islamic Republic against internal and external threats. Its participation in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s led to the expansion of both its role and its might, making it Iran’s dominant military force, with its own army, navy, and air force and, later, its own intelligence wing.




A view of a damaged silo at the Saudi Aramco oil facility in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia after the Houthis launched a missile attack on the facility, triggering an explosion and a fire in a fuel tank. (File/AFP)

Over time, it gained an outsized role in executing Iran’s foreign policy and currently wields control over vast segments of the economy. The IRGC has proven to be a favored tool of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to launch plausibly deniable asymmetric attacks using cadres and their proxies who are indoctrinated and trained by Iranian operatives with decades of experience in such operations.

Unsurprisingly, the general consensus of analysts was that lifting both nuclear and terror-related sanctions would inevitably lead to a major cash infusion into IRGC coffers that could only be an incentive for expansion of the organization’s terror activities.

“The move allows people and companies connected to the IRGC to engage in business deals with foreign entities with less scrutiny and move money across the globe more easily,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, a senior adviser on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Arab News.

“This is in addition to tens of billions of dollars that become available to the regime after the deal, which benefits the IRGC as a key stakeholder of the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Tehran.

“Removing the IRGC from the terror list and lifting sanctions on companies connected to it boosts its financial resources, expands its operational capacity, and increases its political power and regional influence,” he said.

Tehran seems to have seized on signals from the Biden administration, which, while publicly claiming that the Vienna process will not be open-ended, has given Iran significant leeway in dragging out the nuclear negotiations in order to gain maximum leverage and concessions.




Iranian crude oil tanker Sabiti sails in the Red Sea. (File/AFP)

“Washington does not seem to be able to say no to Tehran because the Biden administration wants a nuclear deal almost at any price.

“The IRGC is a terrorist organization and has not changed its behavior or mission. What has changed is that Washington is desperate to reach a deal with the ayatollahs,” Ghasseminejad added.

The IRGC has been implicated in attacks against civilians since the 1980s. Its terror operations have, by most accounts, killed thousands of innocent foreigners, targeting Arabs, Israelis, Americans, and Europeans, from Argentina to Thailand.

Its proxies, particularly the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, actively threaten the Arab world, while building missile capabilities that threaten the very existence of Israel. And while the Biden administration has of late condemned indiscriminate Houthi missile attacks on civilian infrastructure and population centers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there has been conspicuous silence in the matter of addressing the root of the problem.

Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against a Nuclear Iran, told Arab News that there were compelling national security reasons for keeping the IRGC on America’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

“The FTO designation carries unique criminal and immigration prohibitions, and thus has a legal distinction that other counterterrorism designations, like Executive Order 13224 (issued by former US President George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 terror attacks in America), lack.




A view of an anti-aircraft missile launcher firing a salvo during a joint military exercise between the Iranian army and the IRGC. (File/AFP)

“Delisting the IRGC in exchange for a mere public commitment to de-escalation would set a troubling precedent as it risks cheapening the FTO list, which designates organizations due to their behavior,” Brodsky said.

He pointed out that the IRGC’s local branches in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen could not be disassociated from the resulting outcome of granting the organization what could be a game-changing strategic concession if approved by Biden.

Terror networks operating under separate names while belonging to a common ideological and operational umbrella overseen by the IRGC would not feel compelled by a nuclear deal to alter their behavior, he added.

“It also makes no sense to delist the mother ship from which manpower, money, and materiel flows — the IRGC — while including its satellites like Hezbollah on the FTO list.

“The (US) Department of State has already had a bad experience after it delisted the Houthis as an FTO, and it awkwardly has had to condemn every Houthi attack while trying to justify the decision. Delisting the IRGC as an FTO would be worse,” Brodsky said.

And he noted that the potential financial windfall resulting from the removal of terror sanctions would also play into internal power dynamics within the Iranian regime.




The IRGC take part in five-days military exercises in three Iranian provinces. (File/AFP)

“I would not underestimate the importance to Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi of the IRGC’s removal from the FTO list. He harbors ambitions beyond the presidency, specifically the supreme leadership, and he needs the IRGC’s support in that process. This may be one of the reasons why the Iranian establishment has made this a priority,” he added.

In reversing former US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, could the Biden team then be setting a precedent that might significantly weaken America’s standing and diplomatic influence in the Middle East?

Brodsky said: “In pressing for the IRGC’s removal as an FTO, Tehran is seeking a propaganda victory. Most importantly it sends a terrible message to US allies and partners in the region, with whom relations are already strained on a variety of issues.”

Biden’s predecessor took a decidedly different tack when it came to the question of how to react to threats emanating directly from IRGC plots. For instance, a decision such as the targeted killing in 2019 of the IRGC’s leader and most capable commander, Qassem Soleimani, in response to intelligence that he was preparing an attack on the US embassy in Baghdad, would be impossible to take were the proposed nuclear deal to go ahead.

Len Khodorkovsky, a former senior US State Department official, said the Biden team was making a fundamental negotiating error in not setting clear red lines for Iran.

“President Biden has decided to do whatever it takes to get back into the JCPOA. That desperation has been used by the Iranian regime to extract outlandish concessions. If you want to know what the IRGC will do after its delisting, just look at what the Houthis have done. Terrorists will always do what they do best — terrorize people,” Khodorkovsky added.

Put simply, if a nuclear deal is signed under the current conditions, Iran’s missiles would continue to threaten Jeddah, Abu Dhabi, Baghdad, Irbil, and Tel Aviv while its long terror arm will be thrown a financial lifeline that will enable it to plunge vast new swathes of the Middle East deeper into chaos and conflict.


Bangladesh opens trial of deposed ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

Updated 2 min 3 sec ago
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Bangladesh opens trial of deposed ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

  • The investigators brought charges of crimes against humanity against Hasina over killing of hundreds of students in a mass uprising last year
  • Hasina has been in exile in India since Aug. 5, 2023, while former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan is missing and possibly also is in India

DHAKA: A special tribunal set up to try Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina began proceedings Sunday by accepting the charges of crimes against humanity filed against her in connection with a mass uprising in which hundreds of students were killed last year.

The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal directed investigators to produce Hasina, a former home minister and a former police chief before the court on June 16.

Hasina has been in exile in India since Aug. 5, 2023, while former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan is missing and possibly also is in India. Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun has been arrested. Bangladesh sent a formal request to India to extradite Hasina in December.

State-run Bangladesh Television broadcast the court proceedings live.

In an investigation report submitted on May 12, the tribunal’s investigators brought five allegations of crimes against humanity against Hasina and the two others during the mass uprising in July-August last year.

According to the charges, Hasina was directly responsible for ordering all state forces, her Awami League party and its associates to carry out actions that led to mass killings, injuries, targeted violence against women and children, the incineration of bodies and denial of medical treatment to the wounded.

Three days after Hasina’s ouster, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the nation’s interim leader.

In February, the UN human rights office estimated that up to 1,400 people may have been killed in Bangladesh over three weeks in the crackdown on the student-led protests against Hasina, who ruled the country for 15 years.

The tribunal was established by Hasina in 2009 to investigate and try crimes involving Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971. The tribunal under Hasina tried politicians, mostly from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, for their actions during the nine-month war against Pakistan. Aided by India, Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father and the country’s first leader.


Macron condemns ‘unacceptable’ violence during football celebrations

Updated 3 sec ago
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Macron condemns ‘unacceptable’ violence during football celebrations

  • Two people died and police made nearly 600 arrests across France overnight as football fans celebrated PSG’s 5-0 triumph over Inter Milan in Munich
  • Macron hosted Coach Luis Enrique and his team after their victory parade on the famed Champs Elysee

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday condemned the “unacceptable” violence during celebrations following Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League final victory, as he welcomed the triumphant team to the Elysee palace.
“Nothing can justify what has happened in the last few hours, the violent clashes are unacceptable,” the French leader said.
“We will pursue, we will punish, we will be relentless,” he added before congratulating the players on their win.
Two people died and police made nearly 600 arrests across France overnight as football fans celebrated PSG’s 5-0 triumph over Inter Milan in Munich.
“The violent clashes that took place are unacceptable and have come at a heavy cost: two people are dead, around 30 police officers and several firefighters have been injured,” Macron said.
“My thoughts are also with the police officer in Coutances who is currently in a coma,” he added.
Macron hosted Coach Luis Enrique and his team after their victory parade on the famed Champs Elysee, thanking the players for their quick condemnation of the previous night’s chaos.
“These isolated acts are contrary to the club’s values and in no way represent the vast majority of our supporters, whose exemplary behavior throughout the season deserves to be commended,” the club said on Sunday.


British FM says Morocco’s autonomy plan for W. Sahara ‘most credible’ solution

Updated 12 min 6 sec ago
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British FM says Morocco’s autonomy plan for W. Sahara ‘most credible’ solution

  • Britain previously backed self-determination for the disputed Western Sahara, which Morocco claims as an integral part of its kingdom
  • Spain and Germany now officially back the Moroccan autonomy plan, while France last summer recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory

RABAT: British Foreign Minister David Lammy said on Sunday that Morocco’s autonomy plan for the territory of Western Sahara was the “most credible” solution to the decades-long dispute, reversing London’s long-standing position.
Western Sahara, a mineral-rich former Spanish colony, is largely controlled by Morocco but has been claimed in its entirety for decades by the pro-independence Polisario Front, which is backed by Algeria.
Morocco has been campaigning for broad support for its autonomy plan after obtaining US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed territory in 2020, in exchange for the normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel.
“The United Kingdom considers Morocco’s autonomy proposal submitted in 2007 as the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis for a lasting resolution of the dispute,” Lammy told reporters in Rabat.
Britain previously backed self-determination for the disputed territory, which Morocco claims as an integral part of its kingdom.

The United Kingdom considers Morocco’s autonomy proposal submitted in 2007 as the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis for a lasting resolution of the dispute

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy

Moroccan foreign minister Nasser Bourita welcomed the shift, saying the new British position contributed “greatly to advancing this momentum and promoting the UN path toward a definitive and mutually acceptable solution based on the autonomy initiative.”
Rabat’s push for support for its autonomy plan has seen success.
Spain and Germany now officially back the Moroccan autonomy plan, while France last summer recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory.
“This year is a vital window of opportunity to secure a resolution before we reach 50 years of the dispute in November,” said Lammy.
The foreign minister also said it encouraged “relevant parties to engage urgently and positively with the United Nations-led political process.”
The United Nations considers Western Sahara a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly ruled out any vote where independence is an option, instead proposing an autonomy plan.
The ceasefire collapsed in mid-November 2020 after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove separatists blocking the only route to Mauritania — a route they claimed was illegal, as it did not exist in 1991.
The UN Security Council is calling for negotiations without preconditions, while Morocco insists they focus solely on its autonomy plan.
“The only viable and durable solution will be one that is mutually acceptable to the relevant parties and is arrived at through compromise,” added Lammy.
In a joint statement, the United Kingdom noted that its export credit agency, UK Export Finance, may consider supporting projects in the Sahara as part of its commitment to mobilize 5 billion British pounds (approximately 5.9 billion euros) for new economic initiatives in Morocco.


Bangladesh opens trial of ex-PM Hasina for crimes against humanity

Updated 01 June 2025
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Bangladesh opens trial of ex-PM Hasina for crimes against humanity

  • Hearing broadcast live for first in special tribunal’s history
  • Former home minister, ex-police chief ordered to be in court for second hearing on June 16

DHAKA: Bangladeshi prosecutors on Sunday opened the trial of fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is charged with orchestrating last year’s deadly crackdown on student-led protests.

Peaceful demonstrations, triggered by the reinstatement of a quota system for the allocation of civil service positions, began in early July 2024 but two weeks later they were met with a communications blackout and a violent crackdown by security forces.

In early August, as protesters defied a nationwide curfew, Hasina resigned and fled the country, ending 15 years in power of her Awami League party-led government.

“She unleashed various law enforcement and intelligence agencies against them (the protesting students) … They slaughtered the agitating students, injured them and committed crimes against humanity,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor at Bangladesh’s domestic International Crimes Tribunal, told the court in his opening speech.

He charged the 77-year-old with “incitement, aiding and abetting, involvement in the commission of the crimes of murder, attempted murder, torture and other inhumane acts as part of the widespread and systematic attacks on innocent unarmed students and the public.”

The UN’s human rights office concluded in February that between July 15 and Aug. 5, 2024, the former government and its security and intelligence apparatus, together with “violent elements” linked to the Awami League, “engaged systematically in serious human rights violations and abuses in a coordinated effort to suppress the protest movement.”

It estimated that at least 1,400 people were killed during the protests, the majority by bullets from military rifles.

ICT investigators have collected video footage, audio clips, records of helicopter and drone movements, as well as statements from victims of the crackdown as part of the probe.

They also “seized records of telephonic conversations of Sheikh Hasina, in which she repeatedly confirmed that she ordered all the state agencies to eliminate innocent civilians peacefully protesting for a fair demand, using helicopters, drones and APCs (armored personnel carriers),” Islam said.

Sunday’s hearing was broadcast live for the first in the ICT’s history.

“The court accepted the charges against Sheikh Hasina, former Home Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun. There are five charges against them and the court accepted all five charges. We presented the charges through live broadcast before the nation,” Islam told reporters after the hearing.

Al-Mamun is the only accused who has been detained while the ex-home minister is in hiding and Hasina remains in self-imposed exile in neighboring India.

The next hearing is scheduled to take place on June 16. The tribunal ordered all three accused to be presented before the court.

The International Crimes Tribunal was established by Hasina in 2010 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani army and its loyalists during Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971.

Over the years, it grew to be widely seen as the Hasina government’s tool for eliminating political rivals.


Zelensky says Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul for talks with Russia on Monday

Updated 01 June 2025
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Zelensky says Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul for talks with Russia on Monday

  • In a statement on Telegram, Zelensky said that Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will lead the Ukrainian delegation, stating "we are doing everything to protect our independence, our state and our people”

KYIV: Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul for a new round of direct peace talks with Russia on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, even as Russia pounded Ukraine with a missile strike that killed 12 soldiers and the biggest drone assault of the three-year war.
In a statement on Telegram, Zelensky said Sunday that Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will lead the Ukrainian delegation. “We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state and our people,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian officials had previously called on the Kremlin to provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the war before the meeting takes place. Moscow had said it would share its memorandum during the talks.
Russian strike hits an army unit
Russia launched the biggest number of drones on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion three years ago, Ukraine’s air force said Sunday. The air force said 472 drones were launched over Ukraine.
Russian forces also launched seven missiles alongside the barrage of drones, said Yuriy Ignat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force. Earlier Sunday, Ukraine’s army said at least 12 Ukrainian service members were killed and more than 60 were injured in a Russian missile strike on an army training unit.
The strike occurred at 12:50 p.m. (0950 GMT), the statement said, emphasizing that no formations or mass gatherings of personnel were being held at the time. An investigative commission was created to uncover the circumstances around the attack that led to such a loss in personnel, the statement said.
The training unit is located to the rear of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) active front line, where Russian reconnaissance and strike drones are able to strike.
Ukraine’s forces suffer from manpower shortages and take extra precautions to avoid mass gatherings as the skies across the front line are saturated with Russian drones looking for targets.
“If it is established that the actions or inaction of officials led to the death or injury of servicemen, those responsible will be held strictly accountable,” the Ukrainian Ground Forces’ statement said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone strikes were reported deep in Russian territory Sunday, including in the Siberian region of Irkutsk, more than 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) east of Moscow.
It is the first time that a Ukrainian drone has been seen in the region, local Gov. Igor Kobzeva said, stressing that it did not present a threat to civilians.
Other drone strikes were also reported in Russia’s Ryazan region and the Arctic Murmansk region. No casualties were reported.
Northern pressure
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that it had taken control of the village of Oleksiivka in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region. Ukrainian authorities in Sumy ordered mandatory evacuations in 11 more settlements Saturday as Russian forces make steady gains in the area.
Speaking Saturday, Ukraine’s top army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Russian forces were focusing their main offensive efforts on Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Lyman in the Donetsk region, as well as the Sumy border area.