The Twenty-Seven adopted, on Monday 23 January, “the most important package of European sanctions since the start of the crackdown on the demonstrations”, according to a European diplomat. The foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) have decided on restrictive measures for human rights violations against eighteen individuals and nineteen Iranian entities. Iranian Sports Minister Seyed Hamid Sajjadi Hazaveh, four commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), four MPs, two directors of Iranian television, but also twelve Pasdaran military units (IRGC), are now banned from travel to Europe and will have their assets frozen on the European continent.
Four months after the first salvo of sanctions imposed in response to the “human rights violations” perpetrated by Tehran since the death of the young Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, and the demonstrations that followed the event, the EU has put nearly eighty Iranian officials and around twenty military units or companies under sanctions. On Monday, London also announced new provisions, asset freezes and travel bans against five individuals and two entities, bringing the number of Iranians under restrictive measures to fifty, according to British diplomacy.
However, the European ministers did not record the classification of the Revolutionary Guards on the European list of terrorist organizations, as requested by the European Parliament, in a resolution voted on Thursday, January 19. While pressure has been mounting for several weeks, in particular from Germany and the Netherlands – the United Kingdom, which has left the EU, is also considering it – the Twenty-Seven are still reserving their response to classify , four years after the United States, this backbone of the Iranian regime on its blacklist of terrorist entities.
“Very strong symbolic measure”
“It would not change anything in substance, since the Pasdarans are already under sanction, but it would be a very strong symbolic measure. A signal “explains a European diplomat in favor of this classification. “That the debate is truly launched at European level is already a giant stepassures Clément Therme, a specialist in Iran, lecturer at Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier. Since the summer, European diplomacy has realized that Iran cannot be reduced to the single issue of nuclear proliferation. The country is much more complex than that. Human rights violations, as well as sales of drones to Russia, must force European diplomacy to review its Iranian policy. »
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Source: Lemonde
