Efforts to proscribe Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at an EU-wide level are simmering this week in Brussels, as member states and MEPs squabble over what stance the bloc should take in the ongoing standoff between Iran and Israël.
Tehran’s recent aggression towards Tel Aviv has accelerated moves to include the IRGC on Brussels’ list of terror organisations, with the EU slowly ratcheting up sanctions against the Iranian regime earlier this week but falling short of fulfilling American demands to restrict oil imports.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is stalling moves to ban the IRGC, claiming that there is a lack of evidence that doing so would require approval by at least one court in any member state.
This assertion was challenged Wednesday in Brussels by Swedish Democrat MEP Charlie Weimers, who presented leaked EU Council documents that contradicted Borrell’s version of the criteria for banning the IRGC:
That is nonsense. Here, I have the council’s secret legal opinion. Nowhere in this document does it say that it has to be an authority in the EU. You know that. You knew the truth. You shamelessly lied to protect the IRGC.
Weimers went on to have his microphone cut off by parliamentary officials for referring to Borrell as a ‘liar’ within the chamber.