European Parliament slaps sanctions on Iran's IRGC
The European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the European Union to blacklist Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to sanction the Iranian leadership.
PARIS — The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday that calls for designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror group.
The blacklisting would include the IRGC and its subsidiary forces, the paramilitary Basij militia and the Quds Force. The resolution, sponsored by some 60 parliamentarians from different wings of the parliament, was adopted with a large cross-party majority.
The vote was by a show of hands with an overwhelming majority supporting the resolution. It follows the adoption of a measure on Wednesday backing the effort.
Meeting in Strasbourg, France, the parliament also called on the European Union to expand its sanctions lists to all individuals and entities responsible for human rights violations in the country, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, Iranian charity organizations (Bonyads) linked to the IRGC and the 227 members of the Iranian parliament who called on the judiciary to make use of the death penalty. IRGC members or affiliated individuals would be banned from any economic and financial activities on European soil.
