Israeli Cabinet Divided Over Scathing Statement On IRGC Delisting

The Journal offered details on how Iran has sold oil and other commodities, citing information from unnamed “Western” diplomats and intelligence officials. The Journal also reviewed financial transactions of several hundred million dollars for proxy Iranian companies in 61 accounts at 28 banks in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Although there is a clearing system inside Iran and exporters ‘trade’ foreign currency on ledgers, hard cash is also withdrawn from foreign accounts and taken by couriers to Iran. The Journal said “much of the revenue” was still in bank accounts outside the country.

As usual with sanctions, such an informal infrastructure has been open to corruption as came to light during the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13). Among those convicted in Iran over malpractice, businessman Babak Zanjani is in jail facing the death penalty after reportedly netting $2.7 billion acting as a middleman selling oil during international sanctions in the early 2010s.

One Western official cited by the Journal called Tehran’s reaction to maximum pressure sanctions – which threaten punitive action against anyone dealing with Iran’s financial system and which sent the country into two years’ deep recession – “an unprecedented governmental money-laundering operation.”

“In only one or two cases the Americans’ acts of aggression against the ships carrying Iranian oil were covered by the media, but several other cases were not,” Owji told Fars News. “Fortunately, the armed forces, especially the IRGC [Revolutionary Guards] Navy, did not allow the enemy to succeed…We took oil to the places the Americans cannot even think of”.

Earlier this month, Associated Press reported the US had seized cargoes of suspected Iranian oil in February as Tehran sought to sidestep US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions that threaten punitive action against anyone buying Iranian oil. AP said the two tankers had used false documents and repainted the decks.

In past seizures, the US has auctioned the crude, earmarking the proceeds for “victims of terrorism” or ‘administration.’ A January report by the Washington Post looked at ways Iran exports diesel despite US ‘maximum pressure.’

Owji told Fars that Iran had increased lately oil production and income. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) confirmed Tuesday that Iran boosted production by 44,000 barrels a day (bpd) in January to 2.55 million bpd in February, fetching an average $93 a barrel, 62 percent up on the 2021 average.

The minister said earlier this month that output could reach its maximum within two months of a revived 2015 nuclear deal and eased US sanctions.

“The Revolutionary Guards are a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of people, including Americans,” Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid said in a statement. “We have a hard time believing that the United States will remove it from the definition of a terrorist organization.”

During negotiations since April 2021 to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran has made clear it expects the United States to lift a raft of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced after the Trump administration in 2018 withdrew the US from the deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

There has been speculation that one of the disagreements in not concluding a nuclear deal is over delisting the IRGC. Opponents of the JCPOA in the US and Israel are aware than not delisting the IRGC would make it harder to gain acceptance in Tehran for reimplementing the agreement, which limited Iran’s atomic program.

Shared global mission

The statement from Bennett and Lapid portrayed IRGC designation as part of a “global fight against terrorism…a shared mission of the entire world.” To remove the designation, they said, would mean the US abandoning “its closest allies in exchange for empty promises from terrorists.”

Former United States president Donald Trump added the IRGC to the list in 2019, the first time part of a state’s armed forces was included. Trump’s designation referred specifically to the 1983 bombing of a marine barracks in Lebanon, carried out by a Lebanese Shia group when the US intervened in the Lebanon war after the 1982 Israeli invasion, and the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, culpability for which has never been conclusively established.

The Israeli statement portrayed the IRGC as controlling a range of groups across the Middle East. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are Hezbollah in Lebanon, they are Islamic Jihad in Gaza, they are the Houthis in Yemen, they are the militias in Iraq,” it said.

Promise not to harm Americans

Bennett and Lapid argued against the US listing groups as terrorists only on the grounds of a perceived threat to Americans: “The Revolutionary Guards took part in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, they destroyed Lebanon, they are engaged in the murderous repression of Iranian civilians. They kill Jews because they are Jews, Christians because they are Christians, and Muslims because they do not surrender to them. We find it hard to believe that the definition of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization will be abolished in exchange for a ‘promise not to harm the Americans.'”

Not only that, the IRGC, for the Israeli leaders, is an “integral part of the murderous repression machine in Iran” whose “hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Iranians and the trampling of the soul of Iranian society.” Hence, argued Bennett and Lapid, removing the IRGC from the list would be “an insult to the victims and the erasure of a documented reality, with unequivocal evidence.”

Collision course

Reports say the Biden Administration is considering removing the IRGC from its ‘foreign terrorist’ list a part of agreement to revive the JCPOA limiting Iran’s nuclear program. But JCPOA opponents in Israel, the US and elsewhere have highlighted the IRGC recently firing a dozen ballistic missiles at Erbil in northern Iraq after an Israeli airstrike killed two Iranian soldiers in Syria. Iran claimed that it targeted an Israeli intelligence base, but Iraq and the US dismissed the claim.

Following a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, Democrat congresswoman Elaine Luria, a naval veteran, tweeted that reviving the JCPOA would “put Iran and Israel on a collision course,” echoing remarks by Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog.

Calling the 2015 deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) a "bad deal," Bolton told Iran International television on Thursday that going back to it is a "terrible mistake for the United States and anyone who believes in peace and regional security."

"The concessions that were made to the mullahs in Tehran to get the deal put back together make it even worse. It was supposed to be about nuclear matters and not about terrorism. If it's about terrorism, there is a lot more to do, to discuss with Iran. But to take the IRGC off the terrorism list I think would be a big mistake," he said, adding that it is the fundamental elements of the deal itself that are bad too.

"That's the real problem," he said, adding that the administration of President Joe Biden is making a "strategic mistake" in seeking to restore the JCPOA. "It's a sign of weakness and lack of strategic vision."

American and Israeli sources told Reuters and Axios that the Biden Administration is considering removing the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which was blacklisted by the Trump administration in 2019 as a terrorist organization, in return for a commitment by Iran to "reign in" the guards.

Bolton also referred to the recent Russian demand for US guarantees that its cooperation with Tehran would not be blocked by Ukraine sanctions, criticizing the Biden administration for granting a waiver to Moscow for nuclear work in Iran. He Russia won "one more concession from the Biden administration", and they will continue to have the same role they had in the 2015 deal and perhaps an "expanded role" in the revived agreement. "This gives Russia a legitimacy that it doesn't deserve at this point."

Bolton who has always advocated regime change in Iran sought complete withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and said the deal was so bad it could not even be fixed. Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019 prevented Trump’s attempts to open diplomatic channels with Iran.

The Iranian regime is "rogue", Bolton said, emphasizing that it must be "overthrown" and "the Iranian people get to have a say who their government is."

Trump did not go along with some of Bolton's major hardline positions such as seeking regime change in Iran and in September 2019, he said on Twitter that he had dismissed him due to the many disagreements between them. Bolton later told the media the president had never asked for his resignation and that he had resigned of his own accord.

Iran on January 8 added Bolton's name to its blacklist of US nationals it accuses of having a role in the decision-making, planning, organizing, financing, directing or carrying out the strike that killed the IRGC Qods Force commander Ghasem Soleimani at Baghdad airport in January 2020.

Earlier this month, the Washington Examiner quoted a Justice Department official as saying that there was enough evidence to indict two IRGC agents who allegedly had plotted to assassinate Bolton but the Biden administration was resisting any public measures for fear that it could derail the Vienna negotiations with Tehran.

Bolton said he could not reveal the details of the alleged assassination plot but considers being sanctioned by Iran, Russia, and China "a badge of honor".

The Republican push against nuclear talks in Vienna since April 2021 is not new, but a decision by the Biden Administration earlier this week to accept last-minute Russian demands has added a new twist to the dynamics of the opposition.

The State Department announced Tuesday that the Biden administration would “not sanction Russian participation in nuclear projects that are part of resuming full implementation”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is sponsoring a bill to prohibit the administration from waving sanctions imposed for the invasion of Ukraine, allowing Russia to continue nuclear projects with Iran worth at least $10 billion.

"The Biden administration is dismantling sanctions and is aching to secure a new agreement with the Iranian regime that is even weaker than the original catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal," Cruz told the Washington Free Beacon. "The Biden administration is so committed to their deal that they are willing to make Iran a nuclear client for Putin, including work that amounts to a $10 billion subsidy for his war machine."

Free Beacon also reported that Rep. Darrell ISS (R- Calif.) is authoring a parallel House version of the bill.

The Biden administration has repeatedly defended its policy of negotiating a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, although it had promised a stronger deal last year, when talks began in Vienna. Officials insist that their top priority is to make sure Iran never becomes a nuclear weapons state, but critics argue that what is being negotiated will not guarantee that.

As the Vienna talks with Iran seemed to be coming to an end, Russia demanded written guarantees from the United States that Western sanctions imposed for Ukraine should not impede its trade and other relations with Iran. After more than a week of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced on March 15 that Moscow has received guarantees from Washington it can continue its nuclear cooperation deals with Iran.

Although this fell short of Russia’s demand for full waivers, but some argued that it would still mean a $10 billion windfall for Moscow while West is trying to turn screws on the Kremlin amid high tensions in Europe.

Sen. Cruz regards the administration’s move on offering the waiver as a circumvention of Congressionally approved sanctions and his bill intends to block the concession. The Senate is almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and any bill to succeed must have bipartisan support. Some Democrats might join the bill, but it needs a Democratic cosponsor to gain more traction.

So far, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has voiced strong reservations about the Vienna talks, but it he has still not endorsed the Cruz bill.

Not only the waiver of Ukraine sanctions on Russia will generate cash for Moscow, but its commercial dealings on nuclear projects might also provide a window to international banking and money laundering through Iran, which has vast experience in evading US sanctions.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican Ranking Member Jim Risch tweeted on Thursday, “Russian enterprises involved in the invasion of Ukraine stand to gain significantly from a bad deal with Iran. It’ll unlock billions for the Kremlin, helping fuel Russian war crimes.”

In the House of Representatives Congressman Jim Banks announced on Thursday that he has introduced “a resolution condemning the Biden admin’s attempt to re-enter the failed, Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.” Fox News reported that 50 Republicans support the resolution.

Iran’s foreign minister said Thursday that a draft agreement in Vienna is almost ready, awaiting a US response on just two issues. One issue reportedly is delisting the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, a move Israel and others strongly object to.

This week, 49 Republican Senators issued a statement telling the White House not sign a deal to revive the 2015 JCPOA, especially if IRGC sanctions are to be lifted.