This follows the political agreement reached by the Foreign Affairs Council on 29 January.

The European Council, the EU’s chief decision-making body, formally decided Thursday to formally add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran to the EU terrorist list.

On January 29, the EU Foreign Affairs Council, which gathers the 27 EU Foreign Affairs Coucil, decided the list the IRGC, which is the elite branch of the Islamic regime’s armed force, as a terrorist organization in response to the violent crackdown by the Iranian regime against protesters since end of December which killed tens of thousands of people according to some estimates. ‘’If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as a terrorist,’’ said EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

The decision to list the IRGC, which needed the unanimity of the 27 member states, was made possible after France and Spain dropped their opposition to the move.

This blacklisting puts the IRGC, which is known as the Pasdarans and reports directly to  the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,  on the same level as Hamas, Hezbollah, Daesh and Al Qaeda.