US Terror Group Designation Of IRGC Welcomed By People Of Iran, Sending Shockwaves Through Regime – OpEd
The Iranian people have welcomed the inclusion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the United States list of foreign terrorist organizations. The IRGC was established by the controlling Mullahs in April 1979 as the main vehicle for maintaining control in Iran and exporting the ideology of the Islamic Revolution throughout the Muslim world.
Its members are deeply hated by the people of Iran for their repressive measures at home and for their looting of the country’s wealth to support their policy of exporting the “Islamic revolution” and destabilization in the Middle East.
They dominate the running of the Iranian the economy as well as participating in smuggling on a very large scale and money laundering of all kinds.
The repressive body
The IRGC controls the people in Iran by brutal repression. Together with their militia, the Basij, they are responsible for repressing political opponents, women, ethnic and religious minorities, workers, teachers, students, youth, demonstrations, and strikes, as well as the use of the Internet. Their repression also reaches beyond the country in the form of terrorist attacks and assassinations worldwide.
The IRGC has executed tens of thousands of political opponents of the Iranian regime. They committed the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mainly the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, in the summer of 1988. They participated in the repression of the popular revolt of 2009, after the re-election of the diabolical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and they are doing everything they can to repress the 2017-2018 popular uprising that, despite all their most brutal endeavors to control, is still ongoing.
A terrorist army
The IRGC, whose full name, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, does not even include the name of Iran, are there to export fundamentalism to all Muslim countries and terrorism throughout the world. They have “distinguished themselves” in hostage-taking, particularly of French people in Lebanon, in bomb attacks, notably in Paris, in Lebanon against the French Drakar garrison, against the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, against the American army in Beirut and in Saudi Arabia with the Khobar towers, against Mecca, Kurdish and Arab opponents, and above all against their democratic alternative, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, with targeted assassinations in Switzerland, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere.
This list is far from complete, it contains more than 300 attacks.
This cruel body, which is only accountable to Khamenei, the mullahs’ Supreme Leader, has monopolized the lion’s share of the Iranian economy since 2005: finance, speculation, banking, mining, agriculture, factories, communications, roads, import, and export, etc. Its members also hold most of the political positions.
A destabilizing force
This entity is the driving force behind the quest for the atomic bomb and ballistic missiles, as well as armed interventions throughout the Middle East. It is the financier and gunsmith of Hezbollah in Lebanon, barbaric militias in Iraq, Houthis in Yemen, and the cruel the regime of Bashar al Assad in Syria.
Zarif, FM and IRGC Commanders met together after the designation of IRGC.
All the people of the Middle East are being battered by this deadly force that is determined on the destabilization of the Middle East.
The enemy of the environment in Iran
It is the IRGC who have systematically destroyed the environment in Iran by deforestation, diverting watercourses, building ill-considered dams, and drying up lakes and rivers. As a result of its management, purely motivated by military and security considerations, but also by corruption, Iran has lost 98% of its water resources. The country is currently overwhelmed by highly deadly floods, but the IRGC has not lifted a finger to help the people of 26 of the country’s 31 affected provinces.
The Iranian people want regime change
The people of Iran are regaining hope and building optimism by seeing the IRGC that has plagued Iran for 40 years being sanctioned. Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi called on the international community to adopt six measures to help the Iranian people in their fight to overthrow the dictatorship in Iran.
1- Recognize the right of the Iranian people and their Resistance to overthrow the ruling theocracy and establish freedom.
2- Include the ministry of Intelligence service (MOIS) and other bodies involved in the suppression and export of terrorism and fundamentalism on the US Department of State and EU terrorism lists.
3 – Expel MOIS and Qods terrorist force agents from Europe and the United States.
4 – Refer to the case of human rights violations of the mullahs’ regime, including the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, to the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
5 – Expel the illegitimate theocratic regime from the UN and recognize the Iranian Resistance as the true a representative of the Iranian people.
6 – Practically expel the mullahs’ regime and its forces from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.
The European Union should also put this criminal force on its terrorist list and meet the expectations of freedom-loving Iranians.
The reaction of Iranian officials cannot conceal their torment. Even as they are trying everything to intimidate the international community through blackmail, it is increasingly clear that behind the curtain of all this arrogance lies the devastating psychological effect of the designation of the IRGC as terrorists.
Jason Blazakis’ comments, published in the Wall Street Journal on April 5, summarizes the scope of this decision. The man who until last year served as director of the U.S. Bureau of Foreign Terrorist Organizations said that “never before has a government entity been listed as a foreign terrorist organization: this designation will have major implications in the future.
Let us hope, trust and have optimism that the implications for the Iranian regime will be very major indeed and in the very near future.
*Perviz S. Khazai is a law graduate and former Apprentice diplomat in French Ministry of Foreign Affairs- in IIAP(ENA)Paris, in United Nations in Geneva- In Red Cross International- In Council of Europe in Strasbourg and International Court of Justice in The Hague 1969-1971. He served as an international law expert of foreign affairs in Tehran 1976-1979. He served as the head of the mission and acting ambassador in Norway and Sweden in 1979-1982. He is now representative of NCRI in northern Europe.
