Spain, France, and Italy have just performed a quiet but devastating act of political cowardice, and they did it with paperwork, procedure, and diplomatic smiles. By blocking the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, they chose comfort over clarity, trade over truth, and short-term calm over long-term security. This is not neutrality. This is complicity dressed up as diplomacy, the kind that only works if you never look at the victims, never count the bodies, and never follow the money all the way back to Tehran.
The IRGC is not a vague political entity, not a debatable armed wing, not a misunderstood regional actor. It is the operational core of Iran’s terror export machine, directly responsible for arming Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Shiite militias in Iraq, and proxy networks stretching from Lebanon to Yemen and from Syria to Europe itself. It trains, funds, equips, and directs groups whose entire purpose is destabilization, intimidation, and murder. This is documented endlessly by intelligence agencies, courts, and open-source investigators. Blocking the designation is not about lacking evidence. It’s about lacking nerve.
France hides behind its old obsession with being a “mediator,” as if history hasn’t already proven that Tehran uses talks as cover and time as a weapon. Italy mumbles about legal thresholds while happily benefiting from trade flows and energy calculations. Spain, perhaps most painfully, pretends this is about preserving diplomatic channels, as if the IRGC has ever been anything but contemptuous of diplomacy unless it can exploit it. These governments know exactly what the IRGC is. They simply don’t want to deal with the consequences of saying it out loud.
And those consequences are not abstract. They are European Jews guarded by soldiers, European dissidents hunted by Iranian hit squads, European infrastructure probed by cyber units tied to the Guards, European streets where proxies raise money, recruit, and organize under the shield of legal ambiguity. When Europe refuses to name the enemy, it gives that enemy room to breathe, operate, and expand. Every delay is operational space. Every excuse is leverage handed to Tehran for free.
What makes this moment truly shameful is timing. Iran is more aggressive, more radicalized, and more openly violent than it has been in years. Its regime is weaker internally and therefore more dangerous externally. This is exactly when clarity is required. Instead, three major EU states chose paralysis. Not because they are blind, but because they are afraid of escalation, afraid of retaliation, afraid of losing influence they no longer really have. The irony is brutal: by trying to avoid risk, they guarantee more of it.
History will not be kind to this decision. It will be remembered as another moment when Europe mistook appeasement for pragmatism and paperwork for principle. The IRGC will not become less of a terrorist organization because Paris, Rome, and Madrid refuse to say the words. It will simply become bolder, richer, and deadlier. And when the consequences finally land on European soil again, as they always do, the same leaders will express shock, hold vigils, and promise reviews. By then, of course, the damage will already be done.
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