On Iran, Biden should reverse Trump’s imaginary statecraft

Washington Post-May 24th 2022

By Daniel Benjamin

and

Jason M. Blazakis

After countless ups, downs and near-death scrapes, the negotiations to restart the Iran nuclear deal appear to be hung up on one final disagreement: an end-of-game demand by Tehran to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps removed from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

On this question likely hangs the last opportunity to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.

The Biden administration has rightly objected that the Iran deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JPCOA), by design deals solely with the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. It does not address Iranian subversion of other nations in the region, its longtime support for terrorism or any other contentious issues. The JCPOA was always meant to address the foremost threat to stability posed by the Islamic republic: its ambition to achieve a nuclear weapons capability. Because that threat is the most likely to trigger a regional, and possibly nuclear, conflict — and because an omnibus agreement dealing with all of Iran’s malign activities was judged to be too difficult to achieve — the negotiations have always been limited in focus.

Though the issue has become politically supercharged, with Iran hawks in both parties ready to pounce if the Biden administration does anything that suggests weakness on terrorism, a sober long-term view is needed here. Iranian-backed terrorism is a serious issue, but the designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization was a stupendously unserious move in the first place, a sanction that brought no discernible pressure on the group or Iran more broadly.

Instead, it is an artifact of the bizarre approach of the last administration, marked chiefly by empty symbolism, tantrums and puerile demonstrations of resentment meant to communicate maximal antipathy. It had nothing to do with advancing U.S. interests.

This was evident in other contexts: Cutting off nearly all aid to the Palestinians because they didn’t welcome President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Or reducing assistance to Central American countries that couldn’t stop the flow of migrants heading north. The terrorist designation of the Revolutionary Guard was another in this series of amateurish efforts to punish a hated opponent.

Indeed, the practical value of the 2019 designation has been nil; the move constrained Iranian action in no material way because Iran has been under sanctions as a State Sponsor of Terrorism since 1984. In fact, since 2007 the IRGC’s Quds Force was sanctioned for the aid it has provided to groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah. This designation — as well as the state sponsorship listing — make it a criminal act to support the IRGC and block any assets the group might have that are held by U.S. financial institutions. The 2019 terrorist designation does the same — nothing more, nothing less.

The Treasury Department’s reporting tells the story well. In 2019, the year the Trump administration announced the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, the total IRGC assets blocked were $1,121,760. According to Treasury’s reporting, blocked IRGC assets actually dropped the following year to $1,049,801. (The report is silent on the basis for the decline.) At the time of the designation, State Department official Brian Hook boasted that it would lead to prosecutions of those who were providing material support to the IRGC. But the designation has resulted in no successful prosecutions. While the administration promised a campaign of maximum pressure against Iran, the designation was just more Trump imaginary statecraft.