The Pasdaran are on the same level as Isis, al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. Europe, with the final convergence in Paris, finds unanimity and takes the clearest step: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps enters the list of terrorist organizations.
“If you act like a terrorist, you must be treated as such”, chanted the High Representative Kaja Kallas, summarizing the meaning of a decision defined as “historic” and matured under the weight of the brutal repression of the ayatollah’s regime.
The sequence of mass arrests, torture, executions and violence against demonstrators has exploded the banks of diplomatic prudence, also pushing France – cautious until the end due to fears over the safety of European citizens detained in Iran and the maintenance of dialogue channels – to support the line dictated by Germany and espoused by Italy.
A turning point that immediately triggered a reaction from Tehran, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi branding the designation a “serious strategic error”.
Meeting in Brussels, the European Foreign Ministers consolidated the consensus formed in the previous hours, also receiving the green light from Belgium and Spain, to the point of tightening the circle around Tehran’s ideological-military apparatus.
A choice that has also resonated outside the EU buildings, where Iranian dissidents have loudly urged Europe not to postpone any longer a decision which, in their eyes, still arrives “over thirty years late”. Travel bans, frozen assets, closed financial taps: after years of targeted sanctions, the Pasdaran are being hit as a whole.
The symbolic scope of the designation is accompanied by a further crackdown, with sanctions on 21 people and entities believed to be involved in the repression of internal protests and 10 other subjects linked to Tehran’s military support for Moscow’s war machine.
In the crosshairs, key figures such as Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, Attorney General Mohammad Movahedi-Aza, the head of the public security police Seyed Majid Feiz Jafari, and the companies accused of orchestrating the Internet blackout during the demonstrations.
The point of no return for Europe was the human toll.
“Thousands and thousands of deaths, perhaps thirty thousand”, declared the minister Antonio Tajani, denouncing “a carnage comparable to Gaza” and numbers “in the face of which one cannot remain neutral”.
This was echoed by his German counterpart Johann Wadephul who, together with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, had been pushing for weeks for a choice defined as “urgent and necessary”, in the face of a regime that “beats, tortures, imprisons and kills”. There remains, Wadephul admitted, concern for the European citizens detained in Iran. But the political message, also shared by Paris, is unambiguous: Europe, faced with the Guardians of the Revolution “with blood on their hands”, “is not blackmailable”.
“Terrorist is the right term for a regime that stifles the protests of its people with blood”, were the words of Ursula von der Leyen to seal a choice that Israel also quickly defined as “historic” through the voice of Foreign Minister Gideon Sàar.
The jurists will now be translating the political direction into formal documents, starting next week: the legal basis has its roots in Germany, with a ruling from the Duesseldorf Court of Appeal that in 2023 recognized the Iranian state as the instigator of an arson attack against a synagogue in Bochum.
The designation of the Pasdaran, Tajani specified, “does not mean” however “giving up on dialogue” with Tehran, also in the shared hope among the European partners of reopening a glimmer of hope in the nuclear negotiations. Certainly, Kallas cut short by excluding any continental support for a military attack by Donald Trump on Iran, “the region does not need another conflict”.