By Joseph Clark, originally published in the Washington Times, April 12, 2022
More than 500 Iranian American scientists, scholars and industry executives are urging the White House not to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the U.S. foreign terrorism list, Tehran‘s key demand for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
In a letter to President Biden on Tuesday, the group said removing the IRGC from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) would go “against the will and interest of the Iranian people” and would be “a direct threat to the advancement of democracy.”
“The IRGC is the tool of terrorism abroad and repression of people on the streets of Iran,” said the signatories, led by the Iranian Professionals’ Ad Hoc Committee on Iran Policy. “This instrument of terror safeguards the religious dictatorship in Iran, and continues to impede all progress towards human rights.”
