NCRI | by Shahriar Kia | 29th January 2026
On 29 January 2026, the European Union officially designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, following a unanimous decision by all 27 EU member states at the Foreign Affairs Council. The designation places the IRGC on the EU’s terrorist list alongside entities such as ISIL/Da’esh and Al-Qaida—an unmistakable signal that Europe is treating the Guard not as a conventional state institution, but as a transnational engine of repression and terror.
This designation carries practical consequences. It triggers asset freezes, travel restrictions on IRGC members, and a ban on providing funding or resources to the organization. In other words, it is designed to disrupt the IRGC’s ability to operate, launder, invest, recruit, and project influence through money, logistics, and networks—whether inside Europe or through international channels connected to Europe’s financial and legal systems. EU officials described the move as both a moral and operational step: a form of real pressure against a force widely seen as central to the Iranian regime’s internal brutality and external aggression.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), welcomed the European Union’s decision to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, describing it as a necessary and long-overdue step against the regime’s machinery of repression and the export of terrorism. She said: “The European Union’s decision to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization is an urgent response to the massacre of young people during the uprising in Iran and a necessary step in confronting the terrorist and theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran. The IRGC is the central agency in charge of repression, as well as the export of terrorism and warmongering. Since its inception, it has played a leading role in crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. As the Iranian Resistance has repeatedly called for over three decades, it should have been designated long ago. Congratulations to the people of Iran, especially the bereaved mothers whose children’s blood delivered a major blow to the crumbling policy of appeasement. The terrorist designation of the IRGC must be accompanied by further urgent measures: closure of the regime’s embassies, expulsion of its diplomats and agents of the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), a complete cutoff of the regime’s financial lifelines, and recognition of the Iranian youth’s right to fight the IRGC and to bring about regime change by the Iranian people and Resistance. Just as the Iranian people once demanded the dissolution of the Shah’s SAVAK, they now insist on the dissolution of the IRGC. They reject SAVAK, the IRGC, and MOIS alike, and seek a democratic republic based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
To understand why this measure matters, it is important to understand what the IRGC is—and what it is not. Shortly after the 1979 revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini, then the Supreme Leader, ordered the creation of the IRGC, publicly portraying it as a guardian of revolutionary “values.” But its real mission has always been simpler and darker: preserving the clerical regime at any cost. Khomeini’s own remark captured that logic: “If the IRGC is gone, the whole country will be lost”—and by “country,” he meant the survival of his ruling system. Over time, the Guard evolved into the regime’s core instrument: a force built not for national defense in the normal sense, but for regime protection, suppression of dissent, and export of terrorism.
Domestically, the IRGC’s record is inseparable from repression. Its priority has been to crush any political challenge and silence any uprising. During the nationwide protests of November 2019, IRGC forces—acting under direct orders from Ali Khamenei—killed over 1,500 protesters. And in the January 2026 uprising, human rights reporting described thousands of protesters—including civilians and children—shot and killed as the IRGC and affiliated forces escalated their crackdown nationwide. Reports have also documented ongoing torture and deaths in detention among arrested demonstrators. This pattern did not emerge overnight; it is consistent with how the IRGC functions: when society rises, the Guard is deployed as the regime’s final shield, using mass arrests, intimidation, and lethal force to prevent the collapse of the system it was created to protect.
But the IRGC is not only a security apparatus. It is also an economic empire. Over decades, it has monopolized large sections of Iran’s economy and industry, plundering national wealth and resources while pushing ordinary people deeper into poverty. Iran may have a regular army, yet the IRGC enjoys an official budget as part of the armed forces—while simultaneously operating through vast economic holdings and networks that enrich the Guard and finance its activities. For many Iranians, this has meant a double burden: repression in the streets, and economic suffocation through corruption and monopolization at home.
Internationally, the IRGC has been linked to the funding, arming, and directing of militant proxies, and to spreading instability beyond Iran’s borders. It has supported groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and aided organizations like Yemen’s Houthis, fueling regional conflict and insecurity. Beyond its proxy network, the IRGC also sits at the heart of the regime’s strategic weapons architecture: it controls Iran’s missile program in its entirety and plays a central role in protecting, advancing, and operationalizing the regime’s nuclear-related infrastructure. It has also been implicated in missile activities and attacks affecting neighboring countries. These actions are part of why the IRGC has faced prior designations elsewhere—including by the United States in 2019, as well as Canada and Australia.
The EU’s decision comes amid rising calls by the Iranian people for the dissolution of the IRGC itself. For many Iranians, the demand is not merely sanctions or symbolic condemnation; it is the dismantling of institutions built to torture and suppress—whether the Shah’s SAVAK in the past or today’s IRGC and intelligence apparatus. The argument is straightforward: if the regime were not committed to repression, war-making, and exporting extremism, a single national army would suffice. There is no justification for imposing the political, economic, and human burden of the IRGC on a population already suffering deprivation.
For the Iranian Resistance and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the EU’s designation is the outcome of a long, persistent push stretching back more than three decades—not a last-minute political turn. As early as 1981, the Resistance’s vision for a post-theocracy transition included the dismantling of the regime’s repressive organs, with the IRGC treated as a central pillar of clerical rule rather than a normal national force. That principle was later echoed in Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan, which links Iran’s democratic future to the end of institutionalized repression and the rule of law—meaning the IRGC’s coercive apparatus cannot remain intact in any genuine transition.
Over the years the campaign moved from principle to policy: by the mid-2000s (2005–2007), the Resistance was pressing European capitals and parliaments to treat the IRGC as a security threat; in February 2010, it explicitly urged EU decision-makers to place the IRGC and its affiliated bodies and companies on the terrorist list; and by January 2019, it argued that partial measures were no longer credible and that full designation—alongside action against the regime’s intelligence networks—was essential to disrupt terror plots, financing, and operational reach. In this framing, “listing” has never been about a headline: it has been presented as a practical legal tool to isolate the IRGC’s networks, cut off resources, and weaken the regime’s main engine of repression at home and aggression abroad.
The EU’s 29 January 2026 decision therefore represents more than a legal label. It is an attempt to translate moral condemnation into enforceable constraints—cutting money, movement, and legitimacy from an institution that has thrived on violence and impunity. For Iranians who have paid in blood for every uprising, this step is not the end of the road, but a long-awaited confirmation of what they have known for years: the IRGC is the regime’s backbone—and weakening it weakens the regime’s capacity to repress at home and export terror abroad.
Now that the European Union has formally recognized the IRGC as the perpetrator of mass violence and slaughter against the Iranian people, the next step must be political clarity as well as legal action: to explicitly recognize the Iranian people’s—especially Iran’s youth—right to legitimate self-defense when faced with the IRGC’s organized, lethal repression.
