The escalating protests in Iran are prompting renewed calls within Germany for a significant shift in the European Union’s approach to the Iranian regime, specifically demanding a renewed effort to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesperson for the center-right CDU/CSU parliamentary group, argues that current measures are insufficient to address the Iranian government’s actions against dissidents, both within Iran and in exile.
Hardt, in an interview with the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND), criticized the EU’s historical reluctance to fully utilize existing legal avenues to curtail the IRGC’s operations within Europe. He contends that a lack of robust enforcement and investigation has hampered efforts to expose, prosecute and penalize the regime’s actions against Iranian exiles and protesters.
Beyond the prospect of formally designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity, Hardt’s proposals include a hardening of existing sanctions against Iran. He sharply rebuked the EU’s prolonged reliance on negotiations, particularly those surrounding the nuclear agreement, arguing that the strategy has demonstrably failed. “The abandonment of stricter sanctions in pursuit of those negotiations has yielded no tangible results” he stated.
Hardt’s proposed sanctions package extends beyond existing measures, calling for a complete cessation of scientific exchange programs with state-controlled Iranian institutions and a blanket ban on Iranian economic activity within Europe. These steps, he believes, are crucial to destabilize the current regime and deprive it of vital resources.
Perhaps most controversially, Hardt’s rhetoric is aimed directly at influencing the dynamics within Iran itself. He believes that portraying the IRGC as intrinsically linked to terrorism could sway members of the security forces to abandon the regime and join the swelling ranks of protesters. “Those young men standing on the side of the ruling elite must recognize that the regime has no future” Hardt asserted, suggesting that a perception of inevitable collapse could trigger a wider defection. Critics will likely question the practicality of such a strategy and its potential to exacerbate the already volatile situation within Iran, but Hardt’s call signals a growing impatience within German conservative circles regarding the EU’s policy toward Tehran.
