Source: US Weighs Dropping Iran's IRGC from Terrorism List

Members of the IRGC march during a parade. Reuters file photo
Members of the IRGC march during a parade. Reuters file photo
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Source: US Weighs Dropping Iran's IRGC from Terrorism List

Members of the IRGC march during a parade. Reuters file photo
Members of the IRGC march during a parade. Reuters file photo

The United States is considering removing Iran's Revolutionary Guards from its foreign terrorist organization blacklist in return for Iranian assurances about reining in the elite force, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The source said Washington had not decided what might be an acceptable commitment from Tehran in exchange for such a step, which would reverse former US President Donald Trump's 2019 blacklisting of the group and draw sharp Republican criticism, Reuters reported.

The move was the first time Washington had formally labeled part of another sovereign government as a terrorist group.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a powerful faction in Iran that controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of carrying out a global terrorist campaign.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Biden administration was weighing whether to drop the terrorist designation "in return for some kind of commitment and/or steps by Iran, with respect to regional or other IRGC activities."

The Biden administration's consideration of such a tradeoff was first reported by Axios, citing Israeli and US sources.

Multiple sources have said dropping the designation is one of the last, and most vexing, issues in wider indirect talks on reviving the 2015 deal under which Iran limited its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.

Asked about the possibility of removing the IRGC from the US terrorism list, US State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to comment beyond saying that sanctions relief is at the heart of negotiations to revive the nuclear deal.



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.