Removal of sanctions on IRGC will permit terror-tied Iranians to enter the country.
By Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon
The Biden administration’s new nuclear accord with Iran is likely to include a loophole that will “allow Iranian nationals linked to terrorism to enter and stay in the United States,” according to a new Republican-authored policy analysis circulating on Capitol Hill and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
With negotiations over a revamped nuclear deal inching closer to completion, the Biden administration is considering a concession that will remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from the U.S.-designated terrorist list.
The removal of this designation remains one of the final sticking points in diplomatic talks surrounding a new accord.
Delisting the IRGC will “open the gates for Iranian terrorists to enter the United States” and make it harder for law enforcement agencies to target IRGC affiliates operating in the United States, according to a new assessment of policy implications authored by the Republican Study Committee (RSC), Congress’s largest Republican caucus and a principal opponent of a new accord.
“Removing the IRGC from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list is a non-nuclear related concession to Iran which would reward terrorist blackmail, allow Iranian nationals linked to terrorism to enter and stay in the United States, weaken law enforcement’s ability to go after those providing support or resources to the IRGC, and make it harder to hold those outside U.S. soil criminally accountable for helping the IRGC,” according to the policy analysis, which was distributed on Friday to 160 congressional offices and obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.
The Biden administration’s bid to remove sanctions on the IRGC is fueling opposition to the deal from Democratic and Republican foreign policy leaders, who worry this concession will embolden Iran’s global terrorism and spy operations. Bipartisan legislation introduced in the House on Thursday and first reported by the Free Beacon seeks to force the Biden administration into disclosing how sanctions relief for Iran will boost the IRGC’s capabilities.
The Trump administration designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization to cripple Tehran’s paramilitary fighting force, which is responsible for killing more than 600 Americans and orchestrating scores of regional terror attacks on U.S. forces, as the Free Beacon first reported last week.
Sanctions on the IRGC could be nixed even as the corps actively tries to assassinate several Trump administration officials, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former U.S.-Iran envoy Brian Hook, and former U.S. central commander Kenneth McKenzie, who retired from the position this week.
Opposition to removing the IRGC from the U.S. terror list is likely to galvanize congressional critics of the deal and make it more difficult for the Biden administration to obtain congressional approval.
Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week emerged from a classified briefing on the new deal with mounting doubts about the accord’s effectiveness, according to lawmakers and senior congressional sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the matter.