The Netherlands will join calls to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation in the European Union, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
The Dutch are reportedly joining Germany’s push for the IRGC to be designated as a terrorist organisation in the EU.
Israel’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, met with the Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp at the Nato summit in Washington on Wednesday. Katz tweeted that Veldkamp had “announced that the Netherlands will join the initiative to promote a decision in the EU to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization.”
“We will continue to join hands in our fight against terror.”
The Netherlands would be joining Denmark, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, who support Germany’s initiative to blacklist the IRGC.
The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group in the EU in 2023 – but most member states did not implement the proscription.
If the group was proscribed across the EU, ranking members of the IRGC could face criminal prosecutions and travel bans, there would be a ban on arms shipments to the group and they could have their financial assets frozen.
The Iranian group was designated as a terrorist organisation in the United States in 2019 and Canada announced last month that it would ban them as a terrorist group.
In opposition, the UK’s Labour Party said they would proscribe the group if elected, but since entering government the policy has stalled, as the foreign secretary, David Lammy, is said to be analysing the foreign policy implications of the election of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
One of the most powerful militias in the Middle East, the IRGC is tasked with enforcing the ayatollahs’ fundamentalist regime in Iran. It sits alongside Iran’s traditional military force, with its own air, land, and naval forces, and coordinates malign proxies across the Middle East.
Its overseas operations wing operates a network of regional proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Katz’s announcement about the Dutch proscription of the IRGC came as the US released a report detailing how the group has been smuggling weapons to their Houthi proxies.
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported that the Houthis used IRGC-supplied missiles for conducting over one hundred land attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and within Yemen itself, as well as on merchant shipping in the Red Sea.
Katz wrote on X he and Veldkamp also discussed Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, “the importance of conditioning any ceasefire on the release of the hostages, and the need to promote severe sanctions against Iran.”
The Dutch government has been contacted for comment.
