Momentum is building within the EU to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, after Italy shifted its stance on Monday and announced it would push for the move.
According to diplomats, Rome had previously been reluctant to back the designation, but reversed course after new data highlighted the scale of Iran’s recent violent crackdown on protesters.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on X on Monday that he would propose the idea “in coordination with other partners” because “the sudden losses among the civilian population during the protests demand a clear response”.
On Tuesday, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which verifies each death through a network of activists inside Iran, reported that at least 5,777 protesters have been killed.
However, Time magazine on Sunday cited two senior Iranian health ministry officials saying at least 30,000 people had been killed in street clashes across Iranian cities. The Guardian reported a similar figure of 30,000 deaths on 7 January, citing its sources, and added that a large number of people had disappeared.
Confronted with the growing civilian death toll, a large majority of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers are expected to back the proposal, along with a new round of sanctions against Iran, at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Thursday.
“Largely symbolic”
The IRGC stands accused of orchestrating Iran’s violent repression of protests, supplying weapons to Russia, launching ballistic missiles at Israel, and maintaining close ties with armed allies such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The United States, Canada and Australia have already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Several EU lawmakers and governments, including the Netherlands, have repeatedly urged the bloc to follow suit.
Yet despite growing support, unanimity is required to add an organisation to the EU terror list, and diplomats say France remains the main obstacle.
French officials argue that fully cutting diplomatic ties with the Iranian regime carries significant risks and that listing the IRGC would be largely symbolic, as many of its members are already subject to EU sanctions under three categories: human rights abuses, nuclear proliferation, and military support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“We are not ruling it out,” Pascal Confavreux, spokesperson for France’s foreign affairs ministry told reporters recently. “We need to discuss it among Europeans, and experts need to do their work.”
He also stressed that while they are potentially seen as insufficient, existing sanctions already target key IRGC figures.
The EU has, for instance, sanctioned Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC Ground Forces, for his role in suppressing the November 2019 protests, when more than 100 protesters were killed by security forces after weeks of demonstrations over gasoline price hikes.
Diplomats also point to France’s need for caution following the recent release of two French nationals, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who spent more than three years imprisoned in Iran. Although freed, they remain at the French embassy in Tehran and have not yet returned home.
By contrast, Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was freed by Iran a year ago and has now returned home.
Keeping diplomatic channels open
A senior official from the EU’s diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service (EEAS) told MEPs this week that severing ties with Iran’s current leadership – including the IRGC – could prove more damaging than beneficial.
“Maintaining open channels of communication and diplomacy with Iran has to remain part of our toolbox,” the EEAS official told MEPs. “If we want to safeguard our interests but also to enable engagement where is required in particular with European citizens that are detained arbitrarily in Iran but also all the many political activists that count on our support.”
“It doesn’t mean normal relations with Iran,” the EEAS official added, “but it has never prevented us from exerting strong pressure, including with tough sanctions to try and influence Iran’s behaviour and policies.”
Beyond political divisions, legal constraints also play a role: under EU rules, an entity can only be added to the terror list following a prior decision by a competent authority in an EU member state or a third country.
Hopes of overcoming this hurdle rose in March 2024, when Germany’s Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court ruled that a 2022 attack on a synagogue in Bochum had been orchestrated by an Iranian state agency. The verdict raised expectations that the EU might finally have sufficient legal grounds to proceed, even if cautiously.