IRGC members
A senior Iranian Lawmaker has threatened that Tehran will place the U.S. Army on its terror list, if Washington designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group.
“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 [ISIS],” Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, head of parliament’s national security committee, said on Twitter on April 6.
Falahatpisheh was commenting on a recent report of the Wall Street Journal. U.S. officials told the New York-based journal that the U.S. is planning to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group as early as April 8.
This will be first time Washington to formally designate another country’s military a “terrorist group.” Some U.S. officials warned that this decision could endanger U.S. troops deployed near IRGC forces in the Middle East.
The U.S. had sanctioned the IRGC as a part of a campaign to pressure Iran into giving up its missile program. However, the sanctions only pushed Tehran to strengthen its ties with its allies and increase its military spending.
