April 17, 2024 — Washington, DC
American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomes the House of Representatives’ strong bipartisan vote in support of H.Res. 288, a resolution calling on Europe to stand against the Iranian regime’s destructive behavior around the world by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terror organization.
IRGC members should not be allowed to step foot in the EU, let alone operate, recruit, and fundraise. Yet that’s exactly what is allowed today. As most recently demonstrated by Saturday’s attack on Israel, the Iranian regime and its proxies seek to drive the United States and Western influences out of the Middle East, to halt the progress of Arab-Israeli peace, to be in the vanguard of an extremist, intolerant, dictatorial ‘resistance,’ and to negate the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their historic homeland.
On Saturday, April 13, the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented and brazen attack against Israel, firing more than 300 drones and missiles. While it was Iran’s first-ever direct attack within Israel’s borders, the regime has previously attempted to eliminate the Jewish state through thousands of attacks from its terror proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
AJC has long held that the IRGC – a powerful military force with a long record of terror in support of the fundamentalist regime – must be recognized as the terror organization that it is. As the United States has already done, the European Union (EU) must also officially designate the IRGC as a terror organization.
Even before Saturday’s aggression from the Iranian regime, AJC’s Transatlantic Friends of Israel led a statement in December 2022 signed by 228 legislators from Europe and North America calling on Western democracies to designate the IRGC as a terrorist entity.
Just as congressional action was key to convincing the EU to designate the military wing of Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 2013, so too can it be helpful now. This past November, AJC applauded House passage of H.Res.599, which calls on the EU to designate the entirety of Hezbollah a terrorist entity and we continue to encourage the Senate to take up companion legislation, S.Res.299.
Similarly, Congress must use its influence to urge EU action against the IRGC and the horrors it inflicts by helping to shut down the Iranian regime’s illicit support networks. For the security of the United States, Israel, and our allies around the world, we need our European counterparts to make this necessary designation.
AJC is the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people. With headquarters in New York, 25 offices across the United States, 14 overseas posts, as well as partnerships with 38 Jewish community organizations worldwide, AJC’s mission is to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. For more, please visit www.ajc.org
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