Foil the Financiers of Iran’s Terrorism The Biden administration believes Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization. So why lift sanctions on banks that help fund it? By Richard Goldberg
Signals out of the White House suggest President Biden won’t give in to Iran’s demand that the U.S. remove Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department list of terrorist organizations as a condition for a nuclear deal. But if Mr. Biden believes the IRGC is a terrorist organization, he must go further and withdraw his administration’s offer to lift terrorism sanctions on the group’s top financiers.
When news broke in March that Mr. Biden was considering Iran’s request to take the IRGC off the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the White House faced outcries from Congress, allies in the Middle East, former U.S. officials and Gold Star Families whose loved ones were killed by the IRGC in Iraq. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if the IRGC is a terrorist organization. “They are,” Mr. Blinken replied.
The next day at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Mark Milley faced the same question. “In my personal opinion, I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist organization, and I do not support them being delisted from the foreign terrorist organization list,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. The Quds Force is one of several branches of the IRGC.
A State Department spokeswoman added last month that “the president shares the chairman’s view that IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists.” A senior administration official told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that the president “doesn’t intend to concede on the terrorist designation, even though this may be a dealbreaker,” in Mr. Ignatius’s paraphrase.
These sound like clear statements that the IRGC belongs on the list, though they leave open the possibility of a related concession with a similar effect: The administration may remove the IRGC in its entirety from the terror list and replace it with the narrower designation of the IRGC Quds Force—giving a pass to the vast IRGC-controlled business empire that subsidizes Quds Force operations. Either way, given IRGC plots to assassinate current and former U.S. officials, Mr. Biden owes Congress an explanation why he is offering to inject the Quds Force with billions of dollars by lifting terrorism sanctions on the institutions that illicitly fund the organization.
In 2018 the Treasury Department imposed terrorism sanctions on Iran’s Bank Melli and its financial and corporate subsidiaries and partners “for assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support” for the Quds Force. The department also imposed sanctions on Bank Tejarat for its financial support of Mahan Air, the force’s preferred airline for support to terror operations.
Less than a year later, the Treasury revealed that the Quds Force had been using the Central Bank of Iran to receive “the vast majority of its foreign currency” since at least 2016. The bank also “facilitated the transfer of several billion U.S. dollars and euros to the IRGC-QF” between 2018 and early 2019. The department imposed terrorism sanctions on both the Central Bank of Iran and Iran’s sovereign-wealth fund, the National Development Fund, which Treasury described as a “slush fund for the IRGC-QF.”
U.S. sanctions officials didn’t stop digging. In 2020, the Treasury imposed terrorism sanctions on Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum, national oil company, tanker company, petrochemical company and other energy entities, citing tens of millions of dollars they directed to the Quds Force.
The Biden administration hasn’t presented any evidence that the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Co. or other banks and companies halted their support to the IRGC or Quds Force. The White House knows these entities fund terrorism but still wants to lift sanctions. The result? Making it easier for a terrorist organization to access and move money—putting U.S. forces, interests and allies in jeopardy.
Mr. Biden’s chief Iran negotiator, Robert Malley, already offered in April 2021 to lift U.S. terrorism sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and the country’s financial and energy sectors. His argument is that the sanctions were imposed illegitimately—that the Trump administration labeled institutions terrorist entities simply to make it harder for a future administration to lift sanctions as part of a possible nuclear deal. The Obama administration, however, claimed that the U.S. retained the right to impose terrorism sanctions on Iran even under its 2015 nuclear accord.
Lawmakers must intervene. In 2017, while the U.S. was still participating in the Iran deal, Congress nearly unanimously passed a law mandating terrorism sanctions on the IRGC and its affiliates. They should do so again—and prohibit Mr. Biden from lifting sanctions on Iranian institutions financing a terrorist organization’s plots against Americans.
Legislation should also threaten sanctions against directors of the Swift financial network if they reconnect terror-sponsoring Iranian banks, including the central bank, to their system.
If the “IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists,” as Mr. Biden insists, the U.S. should stop at nothing to deny them the resources to sponsor terrorism.
Mr. Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served as White House National Security Council director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction, 2019-20.
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