Iran says it now considers all European Union militaries to be terrorist groups, lashing out after the bloc declared the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard a terror group over its bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.
The terror-designation announcement was made by the Islamic Republic’s speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former Guard commander, on Sunday and comes after the EU placed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran (IRGC) on the terror list last week.
Tehran’s response, which likely will be symbolic, uses a 2019 law to reciprocally declare other nations’ military terror groups following the United States’ declaration of the Guard as a terror group that year.
The United States was the first country in the world to list the IRGC accordingly during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.
A symbolic step
The EU’s move last Thursday was triggered by the violent repression of mass protests in Iran.
The security forces – including the IRGC in particular – have used extreme brutality against demonstrators in recent weeks. Human rights organisations assume that thousands have been killed, and several EU foreign ministers recently even spoke of possibly up to 30,000 victims.
As extensive sanctions are already in place against the Revolutionary Guards, the decision is unlikely to have any immediate practical consequences.
Nevertheless, the classification of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation has been controversial and intensively discussed within the EU for years.
Following the EU’s decision, Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi spoke of a “serious strategic mistake”.
Meanwhile, Ghalibaf accused Europe of merely serving the interests of the USA with its actions. “Europe wants to please its master, America, with these measures,” the parliamentary speaker told the Iranian news agency Isna.
Members of parliament also demonstrated their protest by wearing Revolutionary Guards uniforms. Videos circulated in Iranian media show politicians chanting slogans such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” with raised fists.
The brutal history of the IRGC
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have a long history of extreme violence and play a key role in the repression of the Iranian population.
The death of Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022 is particularly symbolic: the young woman had been arrested by the morality police in Tehran three days earlier for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.
During her detention, she lost consciousness, fell into a coma, and later died in the hospital.
Amini’s death triggered a nationwide wave of mass protests in Iran and also sparked a broad international solidarity movement.
Under the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”), an old Kurdish political slogan, the protest became a symbol of resistance against oppression and state violence in Iran.
