France Warns US against Blacklisting IRGC

“In the context of regional instability, France is vigilant on any actions that could exacerbate the current crises,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told a daily briefing, when asked if Paris backed putting the IRGC on a terrorism list, Reuters reported.

She added, “With this in mind, regional states have a specific role to play and must show restraint and a sense of responsibility”.

Iran’s foreign ministry promised on Monday to give a “crushing” response if the United States’ President Donald Trump designated the country’s most powerful security force as a terrorist organization.

In early August, Donald Trump signed into law one of the most wide-ranging sanctions measures of the last five years, known as Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which enhances three separate sanctions programs targeting Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

CAATSA expands US sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile program and enhances the legal basis for existing sanctions targeting the IRGC. It would also establish an additional US legal basis for sanctions targeting IRGC on the allegations of support for terrorism.

In mid-September, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei lambasted the US for violating the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), warning that any “wrong move” concerning the nuclear deal would draw reaction from Iran.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, US, Britain, France, and Germany) reached the 159-page nuclear agreement in July 2015 and started to implement it in January 2016.

Since the historic deal was signed in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly confirmed the Islamic Republic’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA, but some other parties, especially the US, have failed to live up to their undertakings.

The US has even imposed many fresh sanctions against Iran, in flagrant defiance of the JCPOA.