BRUSSELS — The European Union agreed Thursday to list Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests, the bloc’s top diplomat said, in a largely symbolic move that adds to international pressures on the Islamic Republic.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said foreign ministers in the 27-nation bloc unanimously agreed on the designation, which she said will put the regime “on the same footing” with al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Islamic State group.
“Those who operate through terror must be treated as terrorists,” Kallas said.
Meanwhile, Iran faces the threat of military action from President Donald Trump in response to the killing of peaceful demonstrators and over possible mass executions. The American military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Mideast. It remains unclear whether Trump will decide to use force.
Activists say the crackdown has killed at least 6,443 people. “Any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise,” Kallas said.
For its part, Iran has said it could launch a preemptive strike or broadly target the Mideast, including American military bases in the region and Israel.
Iran issued a warning to ships at sea Thursday that it planned to run a drill next week that would include live firing in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially disrupting traffic through a waterway that sees 20% of all the world’s oil pass through it.
Other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have designated the Guard as a terrorist organization.
Terrorist group label a ‘symbolic act’
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the designation as a “PR stunt” and said Europe would be affected if energy prices surge as a result of the sanctions.
“Several countries are presently attempting to avert the eruption of all-out war in our region. None of them are European,” he wrote on X.
France originally objected to listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization over fears it would endanger French citizens detained in Iran, as well as diplomatic missions, but the country reversed course. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the Foreign Affairs Council on Thursday in Brussels that France supports more sanctions on Iran and the listing “because there can be no impunity for the crimes committed.”
“In Iran, the unbearable repression that has engulfed the peaceful revolt of the Iranian people cannot go unanswered,” he said.
Edouard Gergondet, an lawyer focused on sanctions with the firm Mayer Brown, said the Revolutionary Guard will be notified of the listing and given the opportunity to comment before the measure is formally adopted.
Kristina Kausch, a deputy director at the German Marshall Fund, said the listing is “a symbolic act” showing that for the EU “the dialogue path hasn’t led anywhere, and now it’s about isolation and containment as a priority.”
“The designation of a state military arm, of an official pillar of the Iranian state, as a terrorist organization, is one step short of cutting diplomatic ties,” she said.
The EU on Thursday also sanctioned 15 top officials and six organizations in Iran, including those involved in monitoring online content, as the country remains gripped by a three-week internet blackout by authorities.
The sanctions mean that affected officials and organizations will have their assets frozen and their travel to Europe banned, according to Barrot.
The Revolutionary Guard holds vast business interest across Iran, and sanctions could allow its assets in Europe to be seized.
Iran already struggles under the weight of multiple international sanctions from countries including the U.S. and Britain.
Iran’s rial currency fell to a record low of 1.6 million to $1 on Thursday. Economic woes sparked the protests, which broadened into a challenge to the theocracy before the crackdown.
Guard emerged from 1979 revolution
The Guard emerged from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution. It operated in parallel with the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.
The Guard’s Basij force likely was key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from Jan. 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people. Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.
Iranian men once reaching the age of 18 are required to do up to two years of military service, and many find themselves conscripted into the Guard despite their own politics.
Strait of Hormuz drill planned
In other developments, a notice to mariners sent Thursday by radio warned that Iran planned to conduct “naval shooting” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and Monday. Two Pakistani security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, also confirmed the warning had been sent.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the drill. The hard-line Keyhan newspaper raised the specter of Tehran attempting to close the strait by force.
“Today, Iran and its allies have their finger on a trigger that, at the first enemy mistake, will sever the world’s energy artery in the Strait of Hormuz and bury the hollow prestige of billion-dollar Yankee warships in the depths of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper said.
Such a move would likely invite U.S. military intervention. American military officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elsewhere, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose Green Movement rose to challenge Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, again called for a constitutional referendum to change the country’s government. A previous call failed to take hold.
WHO says doctors detained, health services attacked
In other developments, at least five doctors have been detained and multiple health workers assaulted while treating injured patients in Iran since the protests began, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
The statement from WHO offered some of the first information to emerge about the country’s medical system as journalists and human rights organizations struggle to assess the toll of the crackdown.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X that a hospital in the western city of Ilam came under attack, and authorities deployed tear gas inside a hospital in Tehran. At least 50 paramedics were hurt at 10 emergency medical posts and over 200 ambulances were damaged, he said.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that the violence in Iran has killed at least 6,443 people in recent weeks, with many more feared dead. Its count included at least 6,058 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 117 children and 54 civilians who were not demonstrating. More than 47,208 have been arrested, it added.
The group verifies each death and arrest with a network of activists on the ground, and it has been accurate in multiple rounds of previous unrest in Iran. The communication cutoff imposed by Iranian authorities has slowed the full scale of the crackdown from being revealed, and The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll.
Iran’s government as of Jan. 21 put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces and labeled the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
