GS 3: International Relations

Why in News?

The U.S. is expected to designate Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organisation, three U.S. officials told. This development marks the first time where the U.S. has formally labelled another country’s military a terrorist group.

Highlights:

• The decision, which critics warn could open U.S. military and intelligence officials to similar actions by unfriendly governments abroad, is expected to be announced by the U.S. State Department, perhaps as early as on the 8th of April, 2019 the officials said.
• The administration’s decision to make the designation was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but the organisation as a whole has not been blacklisted.
• In 2007, the U.S. Treasury designated the IRGC’s Quds Force, its unit in charge of operations abroad, “for its support of terrorism,” and has described it as Iran’s “primary arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups.”
• Iran said it put the U.S. military on its terror list in response. “If the Revolutionary Guards are placed on America’s list of terrorist groups, we will put that country’s military on the terror blacklist next to Daesh (Islamic State),” Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said head of Parliament’s National Security Committee.