EU’s strategic miscalculation
By Rasoul Mousavi
Former Iranian ambassador to Finland, Estonia
On Thursday, at the close of a meeting of European Union foreign ministers, Kaja Kallas of Estonia, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, outlined four issues in a brief two-minute interview, which included the designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist organization” by EU member states, assistance aimed at improving conditions in Syria, support for efforts to establish peace in Gaza, and sanctions against both sides in the Sudan conflict. Kallas said EU foreign ministers had decided, with the aim of pressuring the Iranian government and supporting Iranian civil society, to place the IRGC on the terrorist list of member states.
In response to a journalist’s question asking whether listing the IRGC amounted to EU support for a US military strike on Iran, Kallas said that declaring the force a terrorist organization meant its activities would fall under the criminal laws of member states, adding that the region did not need another war.
Placing the Guards on the EU’s discredited terrorist list is not new and was first raised more than two years ago. At that time, I personally suggested to the late FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian that if Europeans persisted with such rhetoric, Iran might assign responsibility for the security of European embassies in Tehran to the IRGC, so that Europeans would understand how their security in Tehran was ensured
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