By Noureddine Omar | 2025-08-27

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) must be formally designated a terrorist organization, experts and officials say, as mounting evidence links Tehran's intelligence services to operations targeting dissidents, journalists, and current and former officials across the West.

The urgency stems from a joint statement by the United States and 13 allies on July 31 condemning Iran's attempts to "kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of sovereignty."

The governments specifically warned that Iranian services are increasingly partnering with international criminal networks to strike at critics abroad.

Iranian affairs expert Fathi al-Sayed of the Middle East Center for Studies said the IRGC has long outsourced violence through trained groups and proxy actors, allowing Tehran to deny responsibility.

"These operations now extend from the Middle East and Gulf states, to Europe, and all the way to North America, which gives them the character of international terrorism," he told Al-Fassel.

Military expert Mansour al-Shehri said the terrorist designation is now essential to strip the IRGC of any legal cover.

Such a move, he said, would unlock coordinated international sanctions and financial restrictions to "thwart the IRGC's plans and eliminate its terrorism, which threatens peace in many countries."

Without such decisive action, Iran will continue exploiting legal loopholes, al-Shehri told Al-Fassel.

A mounting case

Evidence of Iran-linked plots continues to accumulate across multiple Western nations.

In Britain, MI5 director Gen. Ken McCallum disclosed that the country has foiled more than 20 plots since 2022.

Meanwhile, German authorities arrested a suspect in July accused of surveilling Jewish targets in Berlin on Tehran's behalf.

Dutch intelligence separately linked Tehran to a 2024 assassination attempt on an Iranian exile, thwarted when police intervened and arrested two suspects.

One of them was also implicated in the Madrid shooting of Spanish politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a longtime supporter of the Iranian opposition movement.

Across the Atlantic, a federal jury in the United States convicted two Eastern European crime syndicate members in March for plotting to assassinate an Iranian-American journalist on behalf of the IRGC.

The plot was orchestrated by a network in Iran that included IRGC Brig. Gen. Ruhollah Bazghandi, prosecutors said.

International response

Iran's foreign ministry dismissed the July 31 statement as "blatant fabrication and a diversionary tactic." But experts counter that the evidence points to systematic state terrorism.

"The broader the coalition against Tehran's threat network -- which ranges from proxies to lone wolf radicals to transnational criminal syndicates -- the greater the chances of handicapping its terror threat," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Some nations have already acted. Canada formally designated the IRGC under its Criminal Code in 2024, forcing banks to freeze its assets and criminalizing dealings with the group.

France's National Assembly passed a resolution earlier this year urging both Paris and the EU to blacklist the IRGC.