Israel calls on US not to delist IRGC as terror group

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid urged the United States today not to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of terror organizations. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of people, including Americans. We refuse to believe that the United States would remove its designation as a terrorist organization,” Lapid and Bennett said in a rare joint statement that Lapid also tweeted.

They pointed out that the IRGC directs and instructs Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq, and that the body is responsible for attacks against American civilians and American forces throughout the Middle East, including in the past year. The IRGC has been accused of plans to assassinate senior American officials and was involved in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians. The statement read, “They kill Jews because they are Jews, Christians because they are Christians, and Muslims because they refuse to surrender to them."

It went on, “The attempt to delist the IRGC as a terrorist organization is an insult to the victims and would ignore documented reality supported by unequivocal evidence. We find it hard to believe that the IRGC’s designation as a terrorist organization will be removed in exchange for a promise not to harm Americans. The fight against terrorism is a global one, a shared mission of the entire world. We believe that the United States will not abandon its closest allies in exchange for empty promises from terrorists."

This is not the first time Israel has protested such reported American intentions.