Why The IRGC Must Be Listed As A Terrorist Organization

The people of Iran have been on the streets fighting for their freedom for over 50 days now. This recent uprising was sparked by the murder of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the “morality police” for the crime of not wearing her hijab properly.

This iteration of mass uprising comes off of the back of the 2019-2020 protests which were suppressed when the regime imported COVID. Those protests came on the heels of the 2017 protests where we first saw the people calling for regime change en masse and the removal of hijabs became a symbol of defiance.

At every turn, the world ignored the pleas of the Iranian people, until now. The death of Mahsa Amini and the new slogan of “Women, Life, Freedom” have captured the world’s attention.

No one has better embodied the international community’s indifference turned preformative support than Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Increasing ties with the Islamic Republic has been central to Trudeau’s foreign policy goals ever since he ran for Prime Minister in 2015. Back then he wanted to reopen the Islamic Republic’s embassy that the Conservatives had closed due to it being used as a base to attack and harass dissidents in Canada.

So far Trudeau has been unsuccessful in his quest to reopen the embassy, but at every turn, he has given the Regime exactly what it wanted. Back in 2018 the regime kidnapped an Iranian Canadian professor, Kavous Seyed-Emami, accused him of spying, and then murdered him in jail claiming it to be a suicide. This was a boundary-testing case for the Islamic Republic when it came to Canada, and Trudeau failed to protect Canadians and it cost more lives.

When the IRGC needed to shoot down a civilian airliner to distract the world from the embarrassing loss of their leader, Qassem Soleimani, it was clear to them that there was a free pass to kill Canadians so they shot down flight PS752. What did the Canadian government do? Justin Trudeau literally bowed down to Javid Zarif and the government defended the IRGC in court, even after the courts had ruled the action an intentional act of terrorism.

There was one brief moment when the cracks in the Liberal’s support for the regime waivered. In 2018 the Conservatives were able to leverage the outrage of the Iranian Canadian community to get the Liberals to agree to a motion to list the Islamic revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The motion passed, however, motions are non-binding.

The failure to list the IRGC as an FTO is a failure to take the most important step to both help the Iranian people and counter the infiltration of their assets into Canadian society. Designating the IRGC as an FTO would give Canadian security and intelligence agencies the ability to pursue IRCG agents internationally.  It would also provide a strong deterrent from any Canadian company doing any illegal dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran, as estimates say that the IRGC controls over 50% of the domestic economy.

No company would want to get hit with offering material support for a terrorist organization and banks would be a lot more careful about taking money from Iran with a blind eye, as now there are serious consequences on the table for engaging in foreign money laundering from IRGC accounts within Iran.

There is more than enough justification to list them as an FTO. The international arm of the IRGC, the Quds Force is already a listed terrorist organization. Plus, there is already a Canadian court ruling from the Ontario Superior court of Justice saying that the IRGC engaged in an intentional act of terrorism against Canadian citizens. 

Trudeau’s big showing of increased sanctions against the regime was just a performance. All bluster, no substance. The Liberals said they are putting on over 10 000 sanctions on officials and IRGC members, however, most of those officials are no longer in positions of power. Trudeau also used the Immigrant and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), not the criminal code which does not have any teeth internationally.

Basically, Justin Trudeau’s big play against the regime boils down to a sanctions package on people who needed to be sanctioned in 2015 that amounts to nothing more than a fancy travel ban for people who were already supposed to be under a travel ban. A classic Trudeau move, like marching in a protest in support of the Iranian people, instead of going into the legislature and passing a bill in support of the Iranian people.

It boils down to this, you either support the Iranian people in their fight for freedom, or you support the regime, and the number one thing you can do to support the people is to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Everything else is posturing.