Most of the bloc has long been in favor of the move, which requires unanimous consent from all 27 members. France, Spain, and Portugal were holding out against the move, but finally relented on Wednesday. Italy, another key holdout, relented on Monday. The change came due to increasing revelations regarding the scale of the massacre carried out against mostly unarmed protesters by the Guard, with some estimates finding over 30,000 were killed on the nights of Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
“The unbearable repression of the peaceful uprising of the Iranian people cannot go unanswered. The extraordinary courage they have shown in the face of the blind violence unleashed upon them cannot be in vain,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a statement.
“France will support the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations,” he added, along with a demand that Iran halt executions, release political prisoners, restore the country’s internet, and allow a United Nations fact-finding mission access to the country.
Sources confirmed to various outlets, including Euronews and the Wall Street Journal, that Spain and Portugal have also shifted in favor of the designation.
Various members of the Guard have already been heavily sanctioned by the EU, making the terrorist designation largely symbolic. However, the designation would ban support of the group within the EU, and signal a harder-line stance against Iran. Politically, it also effectively signals an end to Europe’s commitment to reviving the old Iran nuclear deal.
The United States designated the Guard a terrorist organization in 2019.
Italy was the first holdout this week to begin demanding that the Guard be designated a terrorist group, starting a momentum that concluded with the reported unanimous consent on Wednesday.
“The losses suffered by the civilian population during the protests demand a clear response,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in a post on X. “On Thursday at the European Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels, I will propose, in coordination with the other partners, the inclusion of the Revolutionary Guards on the list of terrorist organizations as well as individual sanctions against those responsible for these heinous acts.”
Germany was reportedly the main pusher of the new designation, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz intensifying his rhetoric against Tehran in recent days. On Wednesday, he suggested that the Iranian government had lost all legitimacy.
“A regime that can only stay in power through sheer violence and terror against its own population has its days numbered. It may take weeks, but this regime has no legitimacy to govern the country,” he said.
The EU currently lists 22 groups as terrorist groups, most notably Hamas and Hezbollah’s military wing. Designating the Guard a terrorist group, an organization with 125,000-190,000 troops, would be the largest designation by far.
An unprecedented global outcry against Tehran is underway after one of the largest single acts of democide in modern times.
Beginning on Dec. 28, large protests broke out across Iran in response to deteriorating economic conditions, soon transforming into a protest against the Islamic government. The protests built momentum over the following weeks, culminating in a brutal crackdown on Jan. 8 and 9. Due to a nationwide internet blackout, little concrete information has been confirmed, but details have begun trickling out amid the digital blockade.
Various estimates have since emerged regarding the death toll, but the newest estimates from two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials and a detailed tally from physicians and first responders, shared with Time magazine, put the total at over 30,000. The Guard reportedly fired on protesters with heavy machine guns and snipers from rooftops, indiscriminately killing civilian protesters.
Dr. Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian eye surgeon who worked on the data, told the outlet that the physicians’ tally of 30,304 is almost certainly a massive undercount, as it did not take into account protesters registered at military hospitals, those taken directly to morgues, or killed in more remote regions.
Breaches in the digital firewall through Starlink terminals have allowed stories and identities of protesters to trickle out.
IRAN MAY HAVE KILLED OVER 30,000 PROTESTERS IN TWO DAYS: REPORT
One of the only comparable mass shootings occurred during the Holocaust, when Nazi death squads shot over 33,000 Ukrainian Jews in the Babi Yar massacre.
President Donald Trump pledged support for the Iranian protesters if the state security forces opened fire on them, but ultimately called off a strike due to inadequate military resources in the region at the peak of the crackdown, and lobbying against the strike by allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel. However, he has spent the past couple of weeks moving assets into place — the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group arrived off the coast of Iran sometime this week. He issued a new threat against Iran on Wednesday, demanding that it come to the negotiating table.
