Germany and the Netherlands encourage the European Union to include the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on its list of terrorist organizations

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hosein Salami

Several countries of the European Union, led by Germany and the Netherlands, are pressing for the bloc to define Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. If it comes to fruition, the bloody armed wing of the Iranian regime would be added to the blacklist that already includes Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and Hezbollah.

“We will study how we can also include the Revolutionary Guard on the list of terrorist organizations,” announced the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, at the end of 2022.

The Netherlands, with a historic tradition of defending human rights, supports the initiative.

And now, according to Le Monde, the idea was installed in Brussels four months after the start of the bloody repression by the regime against the people’s demonstrations unleashed after the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Morale Police. .

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Reuters)

“Politically, the time has come to get tough. We must be firm without breaking relations by hitting an organization located at the heart of the system,” a diplomatic source told Le Monde.

The initiative by Germany and the Netherlands is a response to the Berlin, massive demonstrations in European capitals in solidarity with anti-government protesters in Iran, where a movement sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police it evolved into a challenge to the Islamic Republic.

Iran already has 16 death sentences and four executions in an attempt to stop the protests that have shaken the country since September, despite international calls to annul the protesters’ sentences.

After the strong police repression that has caused nearly 500 deaths and almost 20,000 arrests since Amini’s death, the courts do not stop issuing sentences in trials described as “farces” and “unfair” by Amnesty International (AI).

Ali Khamenei and the cover of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo: “Mullahs, go back where you came from”

This week, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hosein Salami, warned the French magazine Charlie Hebdo to remember what happened to the writer Salman Rushdie, who was attacked more than 30 years after the publication of a novel in the one who “insulted Islam”.

“I advise the French and directors of Charlie Hebdo magazine to look at what happened to Salman Rushdie,” Salami said.

The British writer of Indian origin suffered a stabbing attack in which he lost the sight of one eye in New York in August 2021 for having “attacked Islam” in his novel “The Satanic Verses”, published in 1989.

Eyewitness Footage Of Salman Rushdie Attack

Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the 1989 assassination of Rushdie and anyone involved in the book’s publication, forcing the writer to spend years in hiding.

The strength of the Iranian regime was born in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah of Persia and established the current theocratic regime led by the ayatollahs.

Also known as pasdaran (“guardians” in Farsi), this paramilitary force was intended as a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces tasked with protecting precisely the theocratic regime and the Islamic republic, as opposed to the army’s more traditional border protection role. , Navy and Air Force.

Its existence is protected by article 150 of the Constitution of Iran, and it is one of the most powerful formations of the Persian state and one of its most politically motivated.

It is believed to currently have more than 120,000 members stationed in land, naval and air units, and the Quds Force, which is its overseas operations division. In addition, it controls the Basij militias, which number another 90,000 members.

The Revolutionary Guard, the elite body of the Iranian army

Its troops fought as paramilitary units in the war between Iran and Iraq between 1980 and 1988; in the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 and during the Israeli invasion of 2006; and more recently in the civil wars in Syria and Iraq. Specifically in the Syrian conflict that began in 2011, they have become one of the main allies of the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad and one of the reasons why he has not fallen.

Its link as a sponsor of terrorism and its destabilizing role accused by the United States, which in 2019 designated it as a terrorist organization, are related to the actions of the Quds Force, which precisely directs Iranian operations in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. among other countries. In this role, the Quds Force supports and trains the terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, as well as Houthi militias in Yemen and various Shiite groups in Syria and Afghanistan.

The group is also linked to the development of the Iranian atomic program and its military side.

But beyond these activities, the force is a complex organization that maintains social, economic, political and military roles, controlling Iranian society through brutal repression and numerous human rights violations, and exporting the principles of the Islamic Revolution to the Foreign.

Keep reading:

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