DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The speaker of Iran’s parliament said Sunday that the Islamic Republic now considers all European Union militaries to be terrorist groups, lashing out after the bloc declared the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard a terror group over its bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.
The announcement by Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf will likely be mostly symbolic. Iran has used a 2019 law to reciprocally declare other nations’ militaries terror groups following the United States declaring the Guard a terror group that year.
However, it comes as tensions are high in the Mideast as U.S. President Donald Trump weighs a possible military strike against Iran. The Islamic Republic also planned a live fire military drill for Sunday and Monday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes.
Qalibaf made the announcement as he and others in parliament wore Guard uniforms in support of the force. The Guard, which also controls Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and has vast economic interests in Iran, answers only to Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“By seeking to strike at the (Guard), which itself has been the greatest barrier to the spread of terrorism to Europe, Europeans have in fact shot themselves in the foot and, once again through blind obedience to the Americans, decided against the interests of their own people,” Qalibaf said.
Lawmakers at the session later chanted: “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” at the session.
