EU sanctions 15 Iranian officials over crackdown

Brussels: The European Union Thursday announced sanctions on 15 Iranian officials, including top commanders and officials of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, over Tehran’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests.

Six Iranian organisations, including bodies responsible for monitoring online content in Iran, were also included in the sanctions list.

The decision by the 27-nation bloc marks the latest Western response to the violence, which activists say has killed over 6,300 people.

The measures add to international pressure on the Islamic Republic as it faced US threats to potentially launch a military strike against it.

US forces have moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Mideast that can be used to launch attacks from the sea. It remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will use force against Iran, after he threatened military action in response to the killing of peaceful demonstrators and over possible mass executions. At least 6,373 people have been killed in Iran’s protests, activists said.

For its part, Iran has said it could launch a pre-emptive strike or broadly target the Mideast, including American military bases in the region and Israel. Iran issued a warning to ships at sea Thursday that it planned to run a drill next week that would include live firing in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially disrupting traffic through a waterway that sees 20 per cent of all the world’s oil pass through it.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said earlier Thursday that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has played a key role in suppressing the demonstrations, would also be added to the EU’s list of terrorist organisations.

“This will put them on the same footing with al-Qaida, Hamas, Daesh,” Kallas said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as a terrorist.”

Iran had no immediate comment, but it has been criticising Europe in recent days as it considered the move, which follows the US sanctioning the Guard in 2019.

Terrorist group label a ‘symbolic act’

France had objected to listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation over fears it would endanger French citizens detained in Iran, as well as diplomatic missions, which provide some of the few communication channels between the Islamic Republic and Europe and its allies. However, the office of President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday signalled Paris backed the decision.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Thursday before the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels that France supports more sanctions in Iran and the listing “because there can be no impunity for the crimes committed.”

“In Iran, the unbearable repression that has engulfed the peaceful revolt of the Iranian people cannot go unanswered,” he said.

Kristina Kausch, a deputy director at the German Marshall Fund, said the listing would be “a symbolic act” showing that for the EU “the dialogue path hasn’t led anywhere and now it’s about isolation and containment as a priority.”

“The designation of a state military arm, of an official pillar of the Iranian state as a terrorist organisation is one step short of cutting diplomatic ties,” she said. “But they haven’t cut diplomatic times and they won’t.”

Guard key to crackdown

The Guard was born from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its Shiite cleric-overseen government and later enshrined in its constitution. It operated in parallel to the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.

The Guard’s Basij force likely was key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from January 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people.

Videos that have emerged from Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.

Sanctioning the Guard, however, would be complicated. Iranian men, once reaching the age of 18 are required to do up to two years of military service, and many find themselves conscripted into the Guard despite their own politics.

Strait of Hormuz drill planned

A notice to mariners sent by VHF radio from Iran Thursday warned that it planned to conduct “naval shooting” in the Strait of Hormuz Sunday and Monday. The Associated Press saw a copy of the message, which was initially reported by the firm EOS Risk Group. Two Pakistani security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorised to talk to journalists, also confirmed the warning had been sent.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the drill. The hard-line Keyhan newspaper earlier Thursday raised the spectre of Tehran attempting to militarily close the strait.

“Today, Iran and its allies have their finger on a trigger that, at the first enemy mistake, will sever the world’s energy artery in the Strait of Hormuz and bury the hollow prestige of billion-dollar Yankee warships in the depths of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper said.

Such a move likely would see US military intervention. American military officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the warning.

Death toll slowly rises

On Wednesday, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the violence in Iran has killed at least 6,373 people in recent weeks, with many more feared dead. Its count included at least 5,993 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 113 children and 53 civilians who weren’t demonstrating. More than 42,450 have been arrested, it added.

The group verifies each death and arrest with a network of activists on the ground, and has been accurate in multiple rounds of previous unrest in Iran. The communication cutoff imposed by Iranian authorities have slowed the full scale of the crackdown from being revealed, and The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll.

Iran’s government as of January 21 put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces and labelled the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 Islamic Revolution.