The discussion initiated in Brussels marks the will of European leaders to increase their pressure on Tehran, while repression does not weaken.
by Philippe Jacqué (Brussels, European office ) and Philippe Ricard
The decision is making its way within the European Union (EU). The twenty-seven planning to place the body of the guards of the Islamic revolution on their list of terrorist entities, at a time when the Iranian regime multiplies death sentences and executions to suppress the uprising that shakes it. While a similar project exists in the United Kingdom, the discussion initiated in Brussels marks the will of European States to increase their pressure on Tehran, four months after the start of the bloody repression of the movement aroused by the death of the detention of the Young Kurdish Mahsa Amini. In Iran, four men were already hanged in December 2022 and early January, in connection with the demonstrations. About fifty risks the same fate.
“Politically, the time is hardening, you have to know how to be firm without breaking the relations, by hitting an organization placed at the heart of the system”, says a diplomatic source, aware that the initiative would mark an additional degradation of relations, already the most tense, between Tehran and the European capitals. To date, the European list of terrorist entities has about twenty organizations, including Al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and the Armed Branch of Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran.
According to our information, several states, including Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, campaign in favor of such an initiative. Their representatives asked for its opinion from the legal service of the European Council in order to prepare a strongest decision possible, that is to say incontestable before the European Court of Justice. “Classify the guards of the Revolution as a terrorist organization is politically important and makes sense,” argued German Minister for Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, January 10, the environmentalist Annalena Baerbock, on his Twitter account.
Prudence of France
France, long in favor of this option, does not oppose it and “works with its European partners to new sanctions measures, without excluding any a priori,” said the Quai d’Orsay. The question is particularly delicate for French diplomacy, anxious not to break with Tehran at a time when seven French nationals are retained in Iranian prisons. At the moment when Iranian power multiplies protests after the publication of a series of caricatures of the Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, in Charlie Hebdo.
“The fact that the United Kingdom and Germany move encourages the French to move,” observes an expert. In the first weeks of the uprising, before agreeing to sanction Tehran, France had appeared to favor restraint, in particular to maintain a possibility of completing negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program. The United Kingdom, Germany and France are in close contact on the issue, due to their participation, with China, Russia, and the United States, in negotiations to save the 2015 nuclear agreement, Donated by Donald Trump in 2018. But the talks are dead after having almost touched the goal in August.
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