His bad ideas have no end

In a move critics warned could escalate risks to US troops and reduce chances for future diplomacy, the Trump administration [yesterday] announced its intent to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization.

The action [...] marks the first time the United States has designated a foreign government entity as a terrorist group, US officials said.

“We’re doing [it] because the Iranian regime’s use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft makes it fundamentally different from any other government,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in remarks announcing the decision at the State Department. [...] “This historic step will deprive the world’s leading state sponsor of terror the financial means to spread misery and death around the world.”

  al-Monitor

Most of the world thinks that's us.

But former US diplomats who served in the region said the designation will add little new economic pressure to Iran while potentially generating an anti-US backlash in Iraq.

And that's precisely the kind of thing Trump's good at.

“This kind of pressure can be used by pro-Iranian factions…to put their own counter-veiling pressure on Baghdad to choose Iran,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq Barbara Leaf told Al-Monitor.

“Advocates can celebrate, but this will not meaningfully add to pressure and certainly meaningfully adds to risk,” Richard Nephew, a former US civil servant who played a key role in the US sanctions regime on Iran and later served as a member of the US Iran nuclear deal negotiating team, wrote on Twitter. “The real story here is the not-so-hidden-motivation: toxifying the relationship so that it is impossible to negotiate with the [Islamic Republic of Iran] in the future.”

And then we can bomb them.

Practically, the US designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization makes it a federal crime punishable by a prison sentence of up to 20 years for a US person to provide material support to the IRGC, US State Department counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales said.

However, the latest designation applies those prohibitions only to US persons, US trade and sanctions compliance lawyer Doug Jacobson said. “The FTO prohibitions apply only to ‘persons’ (including companies) in the US or subject to US jurisdiction,” Jacobson tweeted.

So, you and I can't deal with the IRGC, but the US government can. How handy.

In Iraq, the US action could be counterproductive, by raising the pressure of pro-Iranian factions on Iraq’s government to pick Iran over the United States, and possibly lead to renewed calls by those factions to ask US military advisers to leave Iraq, said former US diplomat Leaf.

[...]

“As far as impact on the Iranian regime, I don’t really see it,” Leaf noted. “The IRGC is already heavily stigmatized … There is already a great deal of caution on the part of Western firms about who they are dealing with when they look at prospective business in Iran."

[...]

Iran immediately denounced the decision and announced reciprocal measures. Among them, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council designated US Central Command and all the forces linked to it as a terrorist entity, Iranian media reported.

So, are both countries now authorized to attack each other's military forces under terrorist rules of engagement?

US special envoy on Iran Brian Hook said IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani was the true Iranian foreign minister, not Zarif. And he rejected warnings that the action could complicate any future diplomatic efforts, including trying to gain the release of US citizens believed held in Iran under the direction and control of the IRGC.

[...]

Netanyahu took to Twitter to thank Trump for the latest gift, which follows Trump’s decision last week to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and keep mum about Netanyahu’s latest campaign promise to annex settlements in the West Bank. “Once again you are keeping the world safe from Iran aggression and terrorism,” Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.

Can a Nobel Prize be far behind?

[The move] will be welcomed by Iran’s adversaries as well, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, which have long lobbied Washington to take a harder line toward Tehran.

[...]

The IRGC has already been targeted by numerous, albeit lesser, U.S. sanctions and designations. The recent history of IRGC-related sanctions goes back to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq when IRGC-sponsored Shiite militant groups actively opposed U.S. forces and were a leading source of U.S. causalities. In 2007, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced an amendment to House Resolution 1585 that would have provided legal backing for potential military action against Iran. They called for the IRGC to be designated an FTO and placed on the list of “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” Their amendment met resistance, particularly from Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who worried, in part, that listing the IRGC could be taken as congressional support for a war with Iran. A compromise was made, and instead of designating the military unit in its entirety, only its special forces wing, the Quds Force, was listed.

Since then, both the Obama and Trump administrations have placed numerous sanctions on IRGC entities and officials.

[...]

Because the IRGC is a state entity, and because it is already heavily intertwined with the state’s economy and foreign relations, sanctions against the IRGC have made it very difficult for countries to do business with Iran. Even though the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), resulted in the United States and United Nations ending major financial sanctions on the country, the United States’ parallel sanctions on the IRGC have remained in force. The Trump administration has continued to build on those sanctions and, after withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2017, introduced new unilateral sanctions aimed at undermining Iran’s economy.

This designation may not substantially add to the pressures already placed on Iran, but it is a drastic and escalatory move. Initially, it could complicate U.S. relations with Iraq, where the IRGC currently operates openly alongside its Iraqi partners. [...] If the United States tries to compel Iraq to break relations with the IRGC, it is likely to run into stiff resistance.

[...]

Should Iran officially consider U.S. forces to be terrorists, then any personnel connected to the U.S. military could be subject to attacks by Iranian proxies or Iranian agents. This would make U.S. operations in Iraq much more dangerous. The potential for escalation between the United States and Iran would increase, with any attacks on U.S. troops by Iranian proxies or tense encounters at sea between the United States and IRGC navies carrying the greater potential for military escalation.

[...]

It is difficult to foresee any future administration pushing for a softer stance against the IRGC; the supporters of such a move are likely to be few and the opponents many. The already distant prospect of improved U.S.-Iran relations has become even more unlikely.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.