Shirin Ebadi: World Governments Should Designate the IRGC as a Terrorist Organization

Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the Human Rights Defenders Center, on Wednesday, March 13, reacted to the confessions of Mohsen Rafighdoost, calling for coordinated and global action by world governments to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. In her Telegram post, Ebadi referred to multiple documents and Rafighdoost's confessions, labeling the IRGC as a terrorist organization and urging European politicians to take decisive action against it. Ebadi emphasized, "The Islamic Republic has no qualms about killing its opponents, and as Mohsen Rafighdoost, a former IRGC official, has explicitly confessed, this regime targets its opponents both in the streets and prisons of Iran and abroad." She also likened the government's response to Rafighdoost's statements to past behaviors of the Islamic Republic, stating, "Just as they attributed the chain murders to rogue elements, linked the killing of citizens to indiscriminate shooting by agents, and called the downing of the Ukrainian plane a human error, this time they will also attribute Rafighdoost's confessions to brain problems and delirium." The Nobel Peace Prize winner stressed that no normal and sane person defends killing and slaughtering humans, but the Islamic Republic has always used repressive and unchanged methods in dealing with opponents. Ebadi added, "The Iranian government kills its opponents and then resorts to hostage-taking to save the murderers." She considered the silence and inaction of Western governments as a factor in the expansion of this method and urged them to change their approach. Ebadi noted that Rafighdoost's words "are not shocking to the people of Iran, as they have felt the economic corruption and crimes of the IRGC commanders for years." According to her, the livelihood situation of the people has been destroyed, and many families have lost their loved ones, while the IRGC continues to play a role in this crisis. The Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed European politicians, urging them to take decisive action against the threats posed by the IRGC and emphasized, "It is time for all governments that see terrorism as a threat to freedom and security to coordinate and declare the IRGC as a terrorist organization." Mohsen Rafighdoost, who was responsible for the Ministry of the IRGC until its dissolution in the years following the Iran-Iraq War, admitted in an interview with the 'Iran Watch' website that the Islamic Republic orchestrated the assassination of prominent figures such as Shapur Bakhtiar, Gholamali Oveisi, Fereydoun Farrokhzad, and Shahriar Shafiq, the son of Ashraf Pahlavi, and he was "responsible for them." Rafighdoost stated that he was the "commander" of the assassinations and added that "usually" members of the Basque separatists from Spain were commissioned to carry out the assassinations. He said, "We said we want to assassinate such a person. They said we will take this much. There was an Egyptian cleric in Germany who was their friend. We put the money with him and said if he does it, give it to him." The assassination of political and ideological opponents and critics of the Islamic Republic began in December 1979 with the killing of Shahriar Shafiq, the son of Ashraf Pahlavi, in Paris and has continued both inside and outside Iran since then. While no one except the officials of the Islamic Republic knows the exact number of these killings, the Abdolrahman Boroumand Foundation recently documented hundreds of extrajudicial killings by the Islamic Republic in a research report titled "Iran: State Violence Without Borders." These cases include the kidnapping and murder of opponents of the Islamic Republic in various countries around the world. Following widespread reactions to Mohsen Rafighdoost's admission of his central role in the extraterritorial assassinations of the Islamic Republic, the office of the IRGC minister in the 1980s claimed that he might have "misremembered" and that his statements were "not credible." Meanwhile, new details about Rafighdoost's role in the assassinations and how the financial resources for them were secured have emerged. On Tuesday, March 11, Rafighdoost's office, following extensive media coverage of his statements regarding his key role in the assassination of figures including Shapur Bakhtiar, Shahriar Shafiq, Fereydoun Farrokhzad, and Gholamali Oveisi, issued a statement claiming that the media had "exploited and misused" the statements of this senior IRGC member. In the statement from Rafighdoost's office, published on the website of Iran Watch, the media that reported the statements of this senior IRGC member were labeled as "hostile" and "malicious." Rafighdoost's office claimed that he had "undergone brain surgery with extensive complications in the past" and "may have misremembered some memories and names." This claim comes while Mohsen Rafighdoost revealed information about the aforementioned assassinations that had not been previously disclosed. An examination of Mohsen Rafighdoost's statements about the planning and execution of the assassination of the Islamic Republic's opponents abroad continues to elicit reactions from users, with many asserting that state terrorism is precisely this.