{"id":38886,"date":"2019-04-06T11:23:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T11:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38886"},"modified":"2019-04-06T11:23:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T11:23:09","slug":"iran-expands-evacuations-as-new-rains-to-worsen-floods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38886","title":{"rendered":"Iran expands evacuations as new rains to worsen floods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nWASHINGTON: The United States is expected to designate Iran\u2019s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organization, three US officials told Reuters, marking the first time Washington has formally labeled another country\u2019s military a terrorist group.
The decision, which critics warn could open US military and intelligence officials to similar actions by unfriendly governments abroad, is expected to be announced by the US State Department, perhaps as early as Monday, the officials said. It has been rumored for years.
The Pentagon declined to comment and referred queries to the State Department. The State Department and White House also declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\nIn response, Iran said it may put the US\u00a0military on its terror list if Washington designates the Iranian elite Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, a senior Iranian lawmaker said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\n“If the Revolutionary Guards are placed on America’s list of terrorist groups, we will put that country’s military on the terror blacklist next to Daesh,” Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, head of parliament’s national security committee, said on Twitter.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a strident Iran hawk, has advocated for the change in US policy as part of the Trump administration\u2019s tough posture toward Tehran.
The announcement would come ahead of the first anniversary of President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and to reimpose sanctions that had crippled Iran\u2019s economy.
The administration\u2019s decision to make the designation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but the organization as a whole is not.
In 2007, the US Treasury designated the IRGC\u2019s Quds Force, its unit in charge of operations abroad, \u201cfor its support of terrorism,\u201d and has described it as Iran\u2019s \u201cprimary arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups.\u201d
Iran has warned of a \u201ccrushing\u201d response should the United States go ahead with the designation.
IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari warned in 2017 that if Trump went ahead with the move \u201cthen the Revolutionary Guards will consider the American army to be like Islamic State all around the world.\u201d
Such threats are particularly ominous for US forces in places such as Iraq, where Iran-aligned Shiite militia are located in close proximity to US troops.
Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the move would be an important step in America\u2019s maximum pressure campaign against Tehran. \u201cA formal designation and its consequences may be new, but these IRGC butchers have been terrorists for a long time,\u201d Sasse said in a statement.
Former Under-Secretary of State and lead Iran negotiator, Wendy Sherman, said she worried about implications for US forces.
\u201cOne might even suggest, since it\u2019s hard to see why this is in our interest, if the president isn\u2019t looking for a basis for a conflict,\u201d said Sherman, who is director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. \u201cThe IRGC is already fully sanctioned and this escalation absolutely endangers our troops in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

IRGC\u2019s reach<\/strong>
Set up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the Shiite clerical ruling system, the IRGC is Iran\u2019s most powerful security organization. It has control over large sectors of the Iranian economy and has a huge influence in its political system.
The IRGC is in charge of Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles and nuclear programs. Tehran has warned that it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,242 miles), putting Israel and US military bases in the region within reach.
The IRGC has an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units and answers to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It is unclear what impact the US designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization might have on America\u2019s activities in countries that have ties with Tehran, including in Iraq.
Baghdad has deep cultural and economic ties with Iran and Oman, where the United States recently clinched a strategic ports deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: The United States is expected to designate Iran\u2019s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organization, three US officials told Reuters, marking the first time Washington has formally labeled another country\u2019s military a terrorist group.The decision, which critics warn could open US military and intelligence officials to similar actions by unfriendly governments abroad, is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}