Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called on the European Union to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
The Swedish Prime Minister’s remarks came shortly after reports that Tehran had enlisted criminals to carry out armed attacks on Israeli embassies in Stockholm and Copenhagen.
“We want Sweden to seriously address with the other EU countries the incredibly problematic connection between the IRGC, their destructive role in the region, but also their escalating actions around various European countries, of which Sweden is one,” said Kristersson.
“The only reasonable consequence is that we achieve a common terror classification, so that action can be taken more broadly than the sanctions that already exist,” he added, according to a report by Expressen.
In May 2023, the Swedish Parliament voted in favour of designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. This followed the execution of Swedish-Iranian Habib Chaab (Asyud).
Later in January 2024, the European Parliament called on the EU to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity, blaming it for the harsh repression of domestic protests and the supply of drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine.
EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said on 23 January before a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels that there are legal reasons why the EU cannot list the organisation as a terror entity. “It is something that cannot be decided without a court, a court decision first.”
However, a report commissioned by the Hague Initiative refuted the EU Foreign Policy Chief’s argument for not listing the IRGC on the EU’s terror list, stating that the argument that the EU cannot list the IRGC as terrorists until an EU court has determined this is baseless.
In late June, the German Press Agency (DPA) quoted diplomats as saying that “multiple EU countries, including Germany, are pushing to classify the IRGC as a terrorist organisation based on a German court ruling.”
The German legal ruling earlier this year is from the High Court in Düsseldorf, which stated that a 2022 attack on a synagogue in the city of Bochum was traced to the “Iranian state authorities.”
A senior EU official told the Wall Street Journal on 4 October that the European Union’s legal services have indicated that the Düsseldorf decision is grounds enough for a potential IRGC terror listing and that the decision on this is now a political one.
