Iran summoned all European Union ambassadors Monday to protest the bloc’s listing of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.
The move comes as Iran faces the threat of U.S. military action over its heavy-handed crackdown on recent mass protests. The American military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Middle East.
However, it remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force, though regional countries have engaged in diplomacy in an effort to halt a new Mideast war breaking out.
"Trump is trying to calibrate a response to Iran’s mass killing of protesters that punishes Iranian leaders without also embroiling the United States in a new, open-ended conflict in the region," the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said Monday.
"Some Trump aides seek to exploit Tehran’s weakness to secure major concessions from the regime, but Trump has set conditions for a diplomatic resolution that Tehran cannot accept."
The EU agreed to list the Guard as a terror group last week over its part in the bloody crackdown on nationwide protests in January that reportedly killed thousands and saw tens of thousands detained.
Other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have previously designated the Guard as a terrorist organization. While the move is largely symbolic, it does add to the economic pressure squeezing Iran, particularly as the Guard has a major influence on the country's economy.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told journalists that the ambassadors had begun to be summoned on Sunday and that the process went into Monday as well.
"A series of actions were reviewed, various options are being prepared and were sent to the related decision-making bodies," Baghaei said.
"We think that in the coming days, a decision will be made about a reciprocal action by the Islamic Republic of Iran toward the illegal, unreasonable and very wrong move by the EU."
Also Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker said that the Islamic Republic now considers all European Union militaries to be terrorist groups, citing a 2019 law.
The Guard emerged from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect the Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution.
Operating in parallel with the country’s regular armed forces, it grew in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.
The Guard’s Basij force was likely key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from Jan. 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people.
Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.
Meanwhile, Baghaei also said a drill by the Guard in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes, was "ongoing based on its timetable."
Iran warned ships last week that a drill would be carried out Sunday and Monday, but prior to Baghaei's comments, it had not acknowledged whether it was taking place.
The U.S. military's Central Command, meanwhile, issued a strong warning to Iran not to harass its warships and aircraft, or impede commercial vessels moving through the strait.
Satellite photos taken Sunday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed small vessels moving at speed in the strait between Iran's Qeshm and Hengam islands, some distance away from the corridor commercial vessels take. The Guard relies on a fleet of small, fast-attack ships in the strait.
Asked about whether Iran could face a war, Baghaei told the public, "don't worry at all." He declined, however, to discuss whether Trump set a deadline for Iran to respond to America's demands.
