Europe’s refusal to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization today stands as one of the most staggering moral failures in recent memory. While Tehran’s praetorian force gunned down thousands of peaceful protesters, three of the EU’s biggest powers—Spain, France and Italy—chose to shield their killers behind legal smokescreens.
The IRGC isn’t a charity. It is the Supreme Leader’s private army, charged with crushing dissent at home. In January alone, IRGC and Basij gunmen opened live fire on unarmed demonstrators, stormed hospitals to drag off the wounded, and left an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 corpses in their wake. Detainees disappear into secret cells like Ward 2A at Evin Prison, where torture, forced confessions and summary executions are routine.
Abroad, the IRGC’s Quds Force runs the world’s most active state-sponsor-of-terror network. From Latin America to Southeast Asia, it bankrolls militias, arms proxies and plots attacks on Western allies. Yet when Canada, the United States, Israel and Bahrain lined up to slap the IRGC with terrorist sanctions, the EU wobbled—cracking only after Germany and the Baltic states force-marched the issue forward.
Spain, France and Italy balked. Their excuse? “Legal obstacles.” In reality, these governments fear economic blowback and political backlash. They’d rather cozy up to Iran’s theocracy than stand with freedom’s defenders. In doing so, they abandon not only Europe’s rebel families but also Jewish communities threatened by IRGC-backed hatred.
Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis tore into this cowardice on the floor of the European Parliament: “Let’s call things as they are,” he thundered. “Three members of our Union are blocking justice. They hide behind courts while Iran’s guards unleash chemical weapons on their own people. Do they really need more proof of murder?”
Groothuis demanded the EU’s High Representative stop the foot-dragging and follow the United States and Canada in listing the IRGC as a terrorist organization. He even called out the IRGC’s pampered scions, studying under European freedoms while their relatives rain death on innocent Persians.
The choice is simple. Either Europe stands on principle—joins its allies in ostracizing Tehran’s executioners—or it proves that economic self-interest trumps human rights. Every day of delay condemns more dissidents to torture and execution.
Now is the time for decisive action. Europe cannot claim to uphold democracy while shielding a regime that murders its own citizens and exports terror worldwide. Any government that blocks this designation betrays not just Iran’s oppressed, but the West itself.
