A Decisive European Step Against the IRGC: The End of Appeasement—No Foreign War, No Compromise

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said EU foreign ministers took a “decisive step” by designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, stressing that “repression cannot go unanswered.”

The decision marks a major shift after years of intra-EU debate, even though the European Parliament had already urged the Council and member states on 19 January 2023 to add the IRGC and affiliated forces such as the Basij and the Quds Force to the EU terrorist list. Iran signalled retaliation, including threats to label EU member states’ armed forces as “terrorists.”

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), welcomed the EU step as overdue and called for immediate follow-through measures: closing regime embassies, expelling operatives, cutting financial channels, and recognising Iranians’ right to confront the repression apparatus and pursue democratic change.

Rajavi and the NCRI frame the move as the product of four decades of organised resistance and documentation. NCRI materials cite the 1981 “immediate tasks” of a provisional government calling for the disarming and dissolution of repressive entities, explicitly including the IRGC and the Basij. The same demand is reiterated in Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan, which calls for dissolving the IRGC, the Quds Force, the Basij and key security bodies.

NCRI also points to long-running disclosures about IRGC-linked strategic programmes, including the August 2002 Washington press conference revealing the secret Natanz enrichment site and the Arak heavy-water project—revelations that intensified international scrutiny.

In political terms, the NCRI promotes a “third way”: no foreign war and no appeasement, but sustained diplomatic, legal and economic pressure combined with explicit support for the Iranian people’s right to resist repression—centred on the NCRI as the main opposition and its core force, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI)—to achieve an Iranian-led democratic transition.