(MENAFN- Trend News Agency ) Tehran, Iran, Oct. 10
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
If the United States puts Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) under sanctions, the Middle East will remain defenseless without the Guards' service in containing 'Islamic State' (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), a political science professor believes.
'Iraq or Syria had no significance as ends to IS mission. The end for IS was to capture Saudi Arabia and claim ownership of the Muslim sanctuaries in Mecca and Medina,' Abolfazl Shakouri Rad told Trend Oct. 10.
'IS would have taken Iraq in just two weeks, as they did capture the depth to Mosul in one week. They would have gone on to take Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia if it were not for the Guards and their resistance against them,' Rad noted in response to a recent US move to name the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist foundation.
In August, US President Donald Trump signed into law one of the most wide-ranging sanction measures of the last five years, known as Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which targets Iran, Russia and North Korea with sanctions.
CAATSA expands US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program and enhances the legal basis for existing sanctions against the IRGC.
'Putting sanctions on the Guards is bitter talk and would be an irrational deed,' Rad noted. 'Because the Guards are a part of the legal government of Iran, they cannot be put under sanctions. For the US to sanction them would be like Russia sanctioning US Marines as terrorists. According to international law, you cannot sanction the armed forces of any globally recognized country.'
'Putting the Guards under sanctions would be tantamount to blowing the whistle of another world war. The IRGC has been providing military advisory missions to the legal government of another country. The same is being done by US forces in Bahrain. You cannot call any of them terrorists or usurpers, because they are organizations belonging to legal countries providing advisory to other legally recognized states,' the expert stressed.
Commander of the IRGC Mohammad Ali Jafari has warned that if the US implements sanctions on the IRGC, it will have to move its regional bases out of the reach of Iran's missiles.
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