Washington, DC - Chairman Tom Lantos of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs issued the following statement in reaction to reports that the Administration intends to designate all or part of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist group:
“I welcome the Administration's decision to continue using economic and diplomatic means to keep Iran and its agencies from destabilizing global security. We are far from having exhausted all the peaceful options for putting Tehran's leadership on the right path; any talk of military intervention is unwise and unsupported by Congress and the American people. The Revolutionary Guard and its Quds Force train terrorists throughout the Middle East, including in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The Revolutionary Guard is also suspected of involvement in Iran's nuclear weapons development program. The group is a major base of support for President Ahmadinejad and owns huge economic enterprises in Iran. Foreign banks will think twice about dealing with these enterprises with the Guard declared a terrorist organization.”
Lantos is the author of the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act (H.R. 1400), which calls for tightening sanctions on Tehran as long as it seeks to develop a nuclear weapons program. One provision of the legislation requires the Administration to determine whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization and placed on the list of specially designated global terrorists.