8 NOVEMBER 2007
By Camilla Hall
A group of British lawmakers and an Iranian opposition group urged the European Union and the U.K. to follow the U.S. example and blacklist the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for supporting terrorism.
“Sanctions will be very much more effective if the EU and Britain follow suit,” said Brian Binley, member of The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, a cross-party group of over 50 lawmakers from both houses of parliament. He called for “a firm policy towards that regime,” at a joint news conference held in London today with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an alliance of exiled opposition groups.
The Bush administration announced new sanctions against Iran on Oct. 25 that label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and its Quds force a supporter of terrorism. The move came two days after the State Department’s senior adviser on Iraq, Ambassador David Satterfield, said Iranian leaders direct and control the supply of weapons and training to Iraqi insurgents for attacks on U.S. forces. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of the group and barred Americans from doing business with it.
“A major part of the $40 billion deals that are taking place between Iran and the EU is carried out by the IRGC and its front companies,” Hossein Abedini, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI, said. “When the EU enters into deals with the Iranian regime, often these deals are in fact being conducted with the IRGC,” Abedini said.
UN Sanctions
The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran in December and strengthened them in March, to step up pressure on the regime stop enriching uranium on concern the program masked a nuclear weapons plan. The U.S. is pushing for a third round of
tougher sanctions unless reports from the European Union and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency indicate Iran has started complying with previous demands to cease production.
The NCRI alleged that more than 500 companies of different sizes belonging to the Guards are currently operating in various countries. Abedini said the Revolutionary Guards are “the most powerful financial and political entity in Iran.”
The IRGC was established by the former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who came to power in the 1979 revolution. The guards were meant to protect the Islamic order of the new Iranian government. The IRGC has since become a major
political, military and economic force in Iran.
Iran, which has the world’s second-largest oil and natural gas reserves, denies allegations it is building an atomic bomb in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and says it wants the technology to generate electricity.
Regardless of what happens at the Security Council, the U.S. is looking to allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia to step up economic pressure on Iran. Britain has repeated its support for tighter UN sanctions but hasn’t acted outside of the UN.