Iran summons ambassadors in protest over listing of Revolutionary Guard as terrorist group
On Monday, Iran announced that it had summoned all EU ambassadors to the Islamic Republic to protest the designation of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.
Iran has taken this step in response to the threat of US military action. This action has been taken in response to the killing and potential mass executions of peaceful protesters. The US Army is gone, leaving the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers in the Middle East. It is not clear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force, although regional countries are engaged in diplomacy in an attempt to prevent a new Middle East war.
Iran’s mass killing of protesters
“Trump is trying to punish Iranian leaders in response to Iran’s mass killing of protesters without entangling the United States in a new, open conflict in the region,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said on Monday.
“Some of Trump’s allies want to take advantage of Tehran’s weakness to extract major concessions from the regime, but Trump has set conditions for a diplomatic solution that Tehran cannot accept.”
The EU agreed to list the Guard as a terrorist group. Last week it had a role in a bloody crackdown on nationwide protests in January, which left thousands dead and thousands more detained.
Other countries, including the USA and Canada, have previously designated the Guard as a terrorist organization. Although the move is largely symbolic, it increases economic pressure on Iran, especially as the Guard has a major impact on the country’s economy.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghai told reporters that the summoning of ambassadors had started on Sunday and the process continued on Monday.
“A series of actions were reviewed; various options are being prepared and sent to the relevant decision-making bodies,” Baghai said. “We think that in the coming days, a decision will be made about reciprocal actions by the Islamic Republic of Iran toward the EU’s illegal, unfair and very wrong move.”
Iran’s Parliament Speaker also said this on Sunday: the Islamic Republic now accepts all EU forces. The speaker cited the 2019 law as evidence.
The guard came out of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979 as a force whose purpose was to protect the Shia cleric-supervised government and was later incorporated into its constitution. Operating in parallel to the country’s regular armed forces, it grew to prominence and power during the long and disastrous war with Iraq in the 1980s. Although it faced potential dissolution after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to flourish.
The Guard’s Basij forces were likely instrumental in quashing demonstrations that began on January 8, when authorities cut off internet and international telephone calls in the country of 85 million people. In the videos that have emerged from Iran through Starlink satellite dishes and other means, people possibly associated with the Iranian army are seen shooting at protesters and beating them.
Baghai also mentioned the guards of the Strait of Hormuz conducting a drill. One-fifth of all oil trade passes through the narrow estuary of the Persian Gulf, which is “running on its own timetable”. Iran warned the ships last week that an exercise would be conducted on Sunday and Monday, but it had not confirmed it would happen before Baghai’s comments. The US military’s Central Command issued a stern warning to Iran not to harass its warships and aircraft or disrupt commercial ships passing through the strait.
Satellite images taken Sunday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press show small vessels moving fast in the strait between Iran’s Qeshm and Hengam islands, just a short distance from the commercial shipping corridor. The Guard relies on a fleet of small, fast-attack ships in the strait.
Asked whether Iran might face war, Baghai told the public, “Don’t worry at all.” However, he declined to discuss whether Trump has set any deadline for Iran to respond to US demands.
