This is one of the last hurdles to overcome to save the Iranian nuclear deal: Iran is demanding that the United States remove the Revolutionary Guards from its blacklist of terrorist organizations, a gesture that is above all symbolic but politically high risk for Joe Biden.
Israel’s public intervention on Friday in this debate, which is already electrifying the political class in Washington, further complicates the American president’s decision.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…has murdered thousands of people, including Americans,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement. warning to their close American ally. “We refuse to believe that the United States would revoke their terrorist organization designation.”
Iran and the United States have been negotiating for eleven months in Vienna to relaunch the text concluded in 2015 between Tehran and the major powers to guarantee that there would never be an Iranian atomic bomb.
The deal has been moribund since the Americans left it in 2018 under President Donald Trump, who reinstated sanctions suffocating Iran’s economy — prompting the Islamic Republic to walk away from key restrictions on its nuclear program.
President Biden has said he is ready to return to the agreement, and therefore to lift the punitive measures again, if the Iranians return to their commitments.
However, Iran declared this week that there were only “two subjects” left to settle with the United States, including that of the “guarantees” that it demands on the survival of the agreement in the event of alternation. politics at the White House.
The other obstacle concerns the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, as confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.
In April 2019, to harden its “maximum pressure” on Iranian power, the Trump administration blacklisted the “Guardians” as a “foreign terrorist organization”.
Theoretically, it is not a nuclear-related sanction, but Tehran believes that it would not have been taken without the American withdrawal from the 2015 agreement and must therefore be erased.
– ‘A promise’ –
Between the lines, the press release from the Jewish state suggests, alarmingly, that a compromise is indeed on the table in Vienna. “We find it hard to believe that the designation of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization will be rescinded in exchange for a promise not to harm Americans,” write its leaders.
The American right, and more broadly the elected officials who display the greatest proximity to Israel, also multiply the warnings.
“Any agreement that would enrich Iranian terrorists will not last,” ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, claiming to have, with Donald Trump, “brought Iran to heel”. “We’ve done it before and will do it again,” he warned.
Faced with this outcry, the US government remains silent.
His dilemma is all the more delicate as the charge of terrorism against this army is almost unanimous in Washington. This entity, key support for other pet peeves of the United States such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis or even certain Iraqi militias, is considered responsible for numerous attacks against American soldiers or interests in the Middle East.
“The number one goal of the United States regarding Iran is that Iran never possess a nuclear weapon,” General Kenneth McKenzie, chief of the American forces in the Middle East, recalled on Friday. “Any solution that prevents it contributes to regional security,” he added to the press.
When asked about the possibility of the Revolutionary Guards leaving the blacklist, he stressed that it “wouldn’t change much” from an “operational point of view” and about how Washington views “the threat” they represent.
Several experts assure that even if the Biden administration were to make this concession to Tehran, the “Guardians” and their leaders would remain subject to other sanctions.
“This is a situation where politics seems to prevail over substance,” laments Barbara Slavin, of the Atlantic Council think tank, who believes that the rescue of the 2015 agreement is well worth the lifting of this sanction.
“I think critics of the deal have jumped on this subject in a last ditch attempt to prevent it from being resurrected,” she said.