Washington, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today made the following statement regarding the State Department's announcement of plans to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO):
“With the full support of the Iranian regime, the IRGC has supported terrorism in the Middle East and across the globe for 40 years,” said Risch. “The IRGC fuels regional instability, particularly through its actions in places like Syria and with its support for proxies, many of whom have been previously designated as FTOs. Stability in the Middle East will never be possible without weakening the IRGC, and this is an essential step in doing that.
“In addition, Iran’s actions pose a direct threat to U.S. personnel in the region, as exemplified by recently declassified DoD reports which conclude Iran was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, which represents 17% of all fatalities during that reporting period. This designation is a significant and necessary addition to our maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime, and something many of us had pushed to see done under the last administration.”
The IRGC will be added to the State Department’s FTO list on April 15, 2019.