Senate May List Revolutionary Guard as Terror Group
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — The Senate is scheduled to vote today on whether to endorse sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps by placing it on a list of foreign terrorist organizations.
While the measure is nonbinding, designating the Iranian military arm as a terrorist group would be a powerful prod to China, Germany, and Russia in diplomatic negotiations over financial penalties on Iran’s oil and gas sector, in response to Tehran’s continued enrichment of uranium. The proposal for the guard originated in the executive branch and has been approved by the president. But the White House has yet to issue the executive order. Instead, the State Department has threatened the possibility of a terrorist designation for the guard in negotiations with Germany. President Bush has sought to persuade Berlin to divest from Iran’s banking sector and support tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council or outside that body, through a new Western-led coalition against the Islamic Republic.
General David Petraeus has cited the Revolutionary Guard, and in particular its Quds Force, as a supplier of copper disc road bombs used by Sunni and Shiite insurgents against American soldiers in Iraq. In the past year, these so-called explosively formed penetrators have been the chief cause of death of Americans serving in Iraq.
A designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization by the White House would be the first time a branch of a country’s armed services was branded as terrorist, opening the way not only to the seizure of the guard’s assets abroad but to military action, as well.
Yesterday, the House passed a package of new sanctions against Iran, including the terrorist designation for the guard, by a vote of 397 to 16. But the sanctions bill is not attached to legislation that is likely to be considered in this session by the Senate, whereas the amendment under consideration in the upper house would be attached to the bill authorizing the 2008 defense budget.
Quoting General Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the national intelligence estimate on Iraq, and a recent panel of retired generals on Iraq’s security service, the nine-page amendment asserts that Iran is stepping up its war on Iraq’s government and the American military presence and that it would be prepared to fill the void if American soldiers left. While lawmakers jockeyed over the bill, President Ahmadinejad of Iran addressed the U.N. General Assembly, declaring that the security arrangements forged after World War II had expired.
At a press conference yesterday, Senator Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut who is one of the amendment’s sponsors, said Mr. Ahmadinejad “and his regime belong in a cave of terrorists, because that is what they are.”
But on the Senate floor, Senator Webb, a Democrat of Virginia who has sought to end the war by mandating troop rotation cycles, said voting for the Lieberman amendment was tantamount to declaring war on Iran, calling the measure “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.”
“At best, it’s a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy,” he said. “At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate.”
Other sponsors of the amendment, including Senator Kyl, a Republican of Arizona, have said their proposal would not be the same as declaring war. They say the amendment only expresses a “sense of the Senate” and is not binding. Also, the bill states that actions the bill endorses to stop Iranian meddling be limited to American activities inside Iraq, they say.
“This amendment is not about starting a war on Iran,” Mr. Lieberman said at a press conference. “It is about responding with economic might to Iran’s war on us.”
To ease the concerns of some Democratic leaders, the resolution yesterday was modified to reflect changes requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, a Democrat of Michigan. One Senate staff member following the bill said he was under the impression that Democrats would support the Iran amendment.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat of Nevada, told reporters that he did not know if he would vote for the Iran amendment.
But last night, the Senate abruptly cut off discussions after Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, requested time to fly to New Hampshire for a presidential candidates’ debate.