U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that with naming Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization the Trump administration had no intention to benefit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the day of legislative elections.
The final decision belonged to Pompeo because the State Department controls the list of designated terrorist organizations.
"This designation is a direct response to an outlaw regime and should surprise no one," Reuters cited Pompeo as saying.
U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday that he was designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, the first time that the United States has named part of another nation’s government as that type of official threat. According to Trump, it will "significantly expand the scope and scale of our maximum pressure on the Iranian regime."
