Israel urges US not to remove Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from terror list

JERUSALEM

Israel on Friday urged the US not to remove Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of terrorist organizations.

“We refuse to believe that the United States would remove its (IRGC’s) designation as a terrorist organization," Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in a joint statement.

The statement came after the Israeli Walla news website reported that Washington was considering removing the IRGC from the list of terrorist organizations in exchange for a public commitment from Iran to “stop the escalation in the region.”

Bennett and Lapid accused the IRGC of being "behind the attacks that targeted American citizens and soldiers throughout the Middle East.”

They also accused the IRGC of being involved in “the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians.”

“The attempt to delist the IRGC as a terrorist organization is an insult to the victims and would ignore documented reality supported by unequivocal evidence,” the joint statement said.

*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar in Ankara