Press releases
AJC Transatlantic Institute Welcomes the European Parliament’s Resolution Calling for the IRGC to be Listed as a Terror Organization
Brussels – 28 November 2024
The AJC Transatlantic Institute, the Brussels-based EU office of the American Jewish Committee, welcomes today’s European Parliament resolution calling again for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be added to the EU’s terror list. The text was supported by lawmakers from five of the Parliament’s eight groups demonstrating broad cross-party unity on the issue.
“The European Parliament has repeatedly shown moral clarity by calling for the IRGC to be designated as what it is: a terror organization. The shock troops of the regime in Iran are in fact the world's most dangerous terrorists as they have an entire state apparatus behind them. It is therefore long past time that the EU Member States finally act," said Daniel Schwammenthal Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute.
"We are hopeful that the new Commission under foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will finally change the EU's Iran policy and make this matter a top priority. The IRGC is after all overseeing the regime's internal oppression and spreading terror and war through its proxies across the Middle East while arming Russia with missiles and drones for its brutal war against Ukraine. Moreover, the IRGC is also plotting terror attacks right here in Europe,” Schwammenthal continued. "The IRGC's primary targets are Iranian dissidents and Europe's Jewish community. It is frankly an outrage that the European Union, which says it wants to fight antisemitism and promote Jewish life, still hasn't listed the very terrorists who are the biggest threat to said Jewish life," Schwammenthal added.
The European Parliament first called for the IRGC to be listed as a terror organization in January 2023. Today’s call of the newly elected Parliament follows a judgment by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court which found that the IRGC was responsible for an attack on a synagogue in Bochum, Germany, providing the necessary legal basis for putting the organization on the EU’s terror list. In October 2024, it was revealed that the IRGC was behind earlier attacks on the Israeli embassies in Sweden and Denmark.