Israel welcomes US decision on IRGC
According to Naftali Bennett, the US President has assured him that he will not remove the IRGC from the list of terrorist organizations. The Islamic Republic's insistence on removing the IRGC from this list is apparently one of the reasons for the halt in negotiations to revive the JCPOA.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett says he welcomes the United States government's decision to keep the Revolutionary Guard Corps on the US list of foreign terrorist organizations.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Bennett called the US President's decision to keep the IRGC on the terrorist list "correct, moral, and defensible" in a statement on Tuesday evening (May 24).
In 2019, a year after the US withdrew from the nuclear deal, former US President Donald Trump signed an order adding the Revolutionary Guard Corps to the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
It is said that the Islamic Republic's insistence on removing the IRGC from this list is one of the major points of disagreement between Iran and the United States and one of the main reasons for the failure of the negotiations to revive the JCPOA in Vienna.
Praise for Biden, “a true friend of Israel”
In a Twitter message, Naftali Bennett praised Joe Biden for this decision, calling him a "true friend of the State of Israel" and adding that the IRGC's true place is on the terrorist list.
The Israeli prime minister says Biden informed him of the decision in a phone call a month ago. In late March, when the Vienna talks broke down without a result, there were whispers of the possibility of removing the IRGC from the terrorist list, and Israel strongly opposed this.
Bennett has called the IRGC the world's largest terrorist organization and the main cause of instability in the Middle East. The Israeli army has repeatedly bombed positions in Syria that are said to be the location or storage of weapons for the IRGC and Iranian-backed groups.
Continuing mediation to revive the JCPOA
US State Department spokesman Ned Price recently stated that some of Iran's extra-JCPOA demands were preventing an agreement from being reached in Vienna, and said that Tehran must respond to Washington's extra-JCPOA concerns in order to meet this demand.
Many observers have interpreted these remarks as a possible removal of the IRGC from the list of terrorist organizations in exchange for a commitment from the Islamic Republic to halt its regional activities.
The possible removal of the IRGC from the list of terrorist organizations has faced strong opposition in the United States Congress, with some Democratic representatives also joining in.
Despite Biden's decision to keep the IRGC on the list of terrorist organizations, it appears that some countries, especially Qatar and Oman, are trying to mediate between Iran and the United States to break the deadlock in the negotiations to revive the JCPOA.
Source: DW
