Thread by @thomasjuneau

The US is considering listing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), one of Iran's two armed forces, as a terrorist organization. This is a bad idea, and one that is incredibly difficult to implement in practice. Short thread.
wsj.com/articles/u-s-t…

Why it's a bad idea: see @ArianeTabatabai on how it actually reinforces hard-liners in Iran. Other good arguments against the listing: it paves the way for war with Iran (very bad idea) and exposes US troops (which is why many in the Pentagon oppose).
theatlantic.com/international/…

To note, many in the Conservative party in Canada support this. The Conservatives included a call for listing the IRGC in the motion they tabled in Parliament in June 2018, which called on the Liberal government to cease reengagement efforts with Iran.

This is the motion that, to everyone's surprise (all opposition parties and *everyone* in the bureaucracy), the Lib government supported, freezing for now Canada's efforts to reopen embassies (which were stalled anyways).

As interviews confirmed in my research for my recent article on Canada-Iran relations, the bureaucracy is looking into options to implement this. But it raises complex legal, technical, and political questions.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Such a listing would (presumably) prevent any Canadian entity from doing business with any business linked to the Guards. In practice, this is extremely complex. Hundreds of thousands of individuals serve or have served in the IRGC. Would the listing target all veterans...

...or only those who occupied certain combat positions? Do intelligence and law enforcement agencies have sufficient expertise to make those distinctions reliably? The demand on them - remember they are already overstretched as new threats like foreign elections meddling...

...and rightwing extremism emerge - would be massive. Would any business with any listed veteran be prohibited? What would happen to dual Canadian-Iranian citizens who are veterans?

In sum, in Canada or in the US, enforcement would be hugely challenging. It would also send relations in a more confrontational direction without any clear offramp - which, presumably, is part of the goal for proponents.

Important point to add, Canada already lists the special operations branch of the IRGC, the Quds Force, as a terrorist entity (the QF is primarily responsible for external ops, eg in Syria, Yemen, etc.). This is far more justifiable (and feasible)

Another important point, the practical consequences of listing the IRGC as a whole are very limited given already existing sanctions, as per @RichardMNephew

https://twitter.com/RichardMNephew/status/1114304528109776897

One of my major concerns if the US lists the IRGC is path dependency, or the high cost for future administrations of undoing a bad and costly move. No US administration, dem or rep, would find it easy to walk back; you never win by appearing conciliatory to iran.

So moves like this end up further locking the us and iran in a confrontational trajectory, raising the costs for those, on both sides, looking for solutions. Of course, hawks know this, and for them that's the point.

The US designates the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization. See thread above on why this:
-is a bad idea
-is very difficult to implement
-does not have much value added from a sanctions perspective
-ultimately aims to further lock the US & Iran in a confrontational trajectory

Link to the news here:

wsj.com/articles/u-s-d…

What are plausible scenarios now that the trajectory of US-Iran relations has been pushed into a more confrontational trajectory?
-toss aside the wishful thinking of Iran hawks in the US: no, the Islamic Republic will not collapse because of Trump's strategy of maximum pressure.

-War? It's a tad bit more likely today than last week, but for the past 12 or 13 years I've been fairly confident in predicting the US won't attack Iran - it would just be so incredibly stupid that even all the damage to my faith in human rationality from the past 3 years...

(ie, Trump) is still not enough to make me change my assessment (also there would be massive resistance in the security apparatus).
-so where to? More muddling along, with a steady rise in tension and more indirect flare-ups but no head-on clash. No prospect of any kind of deal.

-I have two major worries. One, there is no obvious offramp; tension is high and increasing but neither side is willing to compromise. Two, with a madman on one side and uncertainty in Iran (domestic troubles, succession, etc.), I worry about unwanted escalation.