Is the US Pretending That Iran's IRGC, "Mother of All Terrorist Groups", Is Not a Terrorist Group?

The Biden Administration's Never-ending Appeasement of the Mullahs

by Majid Rafizadeh 

• "It [the IRGC] is also a chief supporter and enabler of other FTOs and insurgent groups in the region. These organizations include, but are not limited to: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi insurgency. The IRGC's actions have led to decades of instability and conflict across the Middle East and the group is responsible for countless deaths, including more than 600 U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq." — Letter from 80 Republicans to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Fox News, March 23, 2022.
• "In Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran's agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ('IRGC'), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security ('MOIS'), and Iran's terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11." — PR Newswire, December 23, 2011.
• One of the IRGC's elite branches, the Quds Force, deploys its proxies and militia groups to attack the interests and assets of the US and its allies in the Middle East, as well as the soft underbelly of the US, Latin America. The Quds Force exerts significant influence, direct or indirect, through a conglomerate of more than 40 militia groups....
• "The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs weapons, ammunition and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and puts them on Mahan Air flights.... these planes fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah." — Amb. Danny Danon, then Israeli Ambassador to the UN, from a 2016 letter to UN Security Council members.
• The IRGC "continues transferring weapons and drones to terrorist proxies.
• The mission of Jihad for the IRGC is unmistakably clear in Iran's Constitution. Its Preamble states: "the Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad... the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are to be organized in conformity with this goal, and they will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of (Shiite) jihad in God's way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God's (Shiite) law throughout the world in the hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others." [Emphasis added.]
• "These assessments, combined with the IRGC's lengthy history of killing hundreds of Americans... make it clear: The IRGC is a terrorist organization and should remain labeled as such.... The pursuit of an ill-conceived 'deal' should not compel American leaders to acquiesce to the demands of a terrorist regime to deny the truth. American lives are at stake, and this is a time to project strength, not weakness." — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, joint statement, Axios, March 22, 2022.

If the Biden administration removes Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terrorist list, it will be enabling this terrorist organization to gain legitimacy, do more business, obtain more funds, kill and harm more innocent civilians, pursue more aggressively its mission of Jihad, anti-Semitism and the elimination of countries in the region, crack down more forcefully on the Iranian people, and carry out more terrorist plots throughout the world. Pictured: IRGC members on parade, marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, on September 22, 2018, in Tehran. (Photo by Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

To appease the ruling mullahs of Iran, the Biden administration in January 2021 first suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group. Since then, the Houthis have been attacking their neighbors, as recently as this week.

Now, the Biden administration is considering also removing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), called the "Mother of All Terrorist Groups," from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The Biden administration, then, wants to preserve -- by sparing it from the terrorist list -- an organization that has killed hundreds, no thousands of Americans "before and after 9/11":

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