Lift the FTO Designation to Save the Nuclear Deal

It would be absurd if this issue were allowed to derail the talks.

The negotiations in Vienna to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action appear to have stalled:

Tehran’s demand that the United States lift its designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and U.S. refusal so far to do that, have brought the year-long negotiations over reviving the Iran nuclear deal to a halt, with no new meetings scheduled and little obvious room for compromise.

The Trump administration’s decision to put the IRGC on the list of terrorist organizations was a mistake and a worrisome precedent, and it would be absurd if this issue were allowed to derail the talks. Laura Rozen reported on the talks being in limbo last week, and she noted that even if the IRGC were taken off the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), it would still be designated and sanctioned in other ways:

The Iranians want the IRGC to be removed from the State Department FTO list, to which it was added by the Trump administration in April 2019. The IRGC would still remain on the Treasury Department’s list of specially designated global terrorists, to which it was added by the Trump Administration in 2017. In addition, the IRGC-Qods Force is on the Treasury Department SDGT list, since 2007.

Getting the IRGC off the list is important for the Iranian government because it means that part of their military is no longer included on a list with many organizations that they also despise. It is also important for Iranians that wish to travel and work in the United States, since prior conscripted military service in the IRGC has been used as a reason to bar entry into the U.S. This just happened to a respected Iranian vocalist whose visa was revoked because he had once been a conscript:

According to Shervin Abachi, whose law firm represents Ghorbani, the Iranian vocalist was directed by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents at the airport to a secondary check-in area, where he was questioned and his visa canceled before he boarded the plane.

Ardekani later learned Ghorbani’s temporary detention and denial of travel likely stemmed from the 49-year-old’s compulsory service decades earlier in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Ghorbani’s experience illustrates the absurdity of how the designation has worked in practice. The man himself obviously posed no threat, and his prior service was not his choice, but he was penalized all the same. The FTO designation is not doing anything to make the IRGC less dangerous, but it does get in the way of constructive people-to-people contacts between Iranians and Americans by putting a huge obstacle in the way of Iranians that want to come here.