 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The United States is planning to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. The IRGC is a group which is part of the Iranian military which was formed after the 1979 Revolution in order to protect the state from a possible coup by the regular military forces which served under the Shah. To talk more about this, we have with us Prashant. So Prashant, firstly, what do you think is the motive behind this move? What is the U.S. and Donald Trump trying to achieve by this? So like you said, the IRGC was formed immediately after the Revolution in Iran and it's about 125,000 strong. And it's not only a military force, it also runs its own commercial and business establishments also. So on the one hand, there is of course the obvious fact that it's an escalation of the moves against Iran. We saw the two-part withdrawal of the two-part sanctions last year after the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear deal. And this can be seen as one additional step in addition to all the saber-rattling that's been happening for some time. But more important is also to note the fact that by declaring, say, the part of the Iranian security establishment as a terrorist establishment, so to speak, what the U.S. gets or what Donald Trump's president gets is the opportunity to declare war on Iran directly without having to go to Congress. This is because immediately after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the U.S. Congress passed an act which allowed the president to basically declare war on any terrorist or what it called terrorist organization without having to go to Congress. So the president has those extraordinary powers. So in one sense, what this also means is that all these people who have been being for blood for the past couple of years, we have John Bolton, we have Mike Pence, we have Mike Pompeo, and all these people are very clearly pushing for war for a very long time. It's something even during the first Bush administration, something they're trying to push. And after Donald Trump came to power, all these people have again come back trying to push the same thing. So we also need to see the risk of this situation actually emerging because both Trump and all his establishment are very clear that Iran is for them a fundamental enemy. And so what this actually does legally is to give the context, to give a pretext for the president to declare war on Iran without having to go to Congress and basically not having to go through all the scrutiny. So that's one of the key contexts for this decision, actually. There were already some sort of sanctions and blacklisting on groups and entities associated with the IRGC. But with if these additional sanctions are placed on the entire group itself, what would be the practical implications of that for Iran and for the region as a whole? So it's interesting because some observers have pointed out that this might actually even hurt US strategic interests. Because among the establishments which have links with the IRGC are also forces in Lebanon, forces in Iraq, which the US interacts with. So in that sense, it's actually strategically speaking a very blind move, so to speak. So we can analyze this as only something that is guided by this overwhelming desire to use force against Iran. On the other hand, Iran has responded obviously by declaring the US Central Command as a terrorist organization and the US as a state sponsor of terrorism. So this actually raises the pitch because you never know what happens. Because now there's so many fields in which the US and the Iran both have presence. For instance, a place like Syria, which the US has not withdrawn, although it's claimed it wants to withdraw. So that's one very good example where Iranian assistance is also there. So how exactly does that work? So actually what this move by the US has done is to create a much more greater scope for conflict. And maybe that's what they're hoping for, some sort of provocation, which then can be used as a reason, as leverage to actually declare a full pledged war. And as you know, all this has been welcomed by all its neighboring regional allies as well. And we see this as part of a tendency of the past couple of years, involving all these countries, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia. To see Iran as right now the primary enemy and the primary, say, what do you call it, the fulcrum of all opposition, so to speak. And some of the arguments are used are very laughable because they claim that Iran was involved in assisting al-Qaeda, which is completely nonsensical because al-Qaeda almost sees Iran as much as a threat as some of the other countries. And Iran has never supported al-Qaeda at all. They were completely different, what do you call it, in every sense of the term. So all this is basically just a pretext to sort of create a war-like situation and to raise temperatures to a point where maybe Iran snaps. And then the US can go all out and declare a war. And as you mentioned, there have been efforts to sort of raise the speech before, but it hasn't happened. So do you think the ongoing Israeli elections have anything to do with this? Right. In fact, Iran has responded saying that this was a gift to Netanyahu a day before the elections. And we also need to see the fact that there have been a number of such decisions because there was one, the shifting of the US embassy. Couple of weeks ago, there was a decision, the Jolan Heights. And now we have yet another decision like this, which again, perfectly works into Netanyahu's campaign. And Netanyahu has been one of the leaders of this whole campaign to brand Iran as a terrorist country. In fact, if you remember, he gave this presentation, which turned out to be an old one in which he declared that Iran was indulging in nuclear exercises again. So in that sense, it's actually a very calculated move also ahead of the elections to give Netanyahu some more of a boost. Because right now it's very important for the US and this specific Trump administration that Netanyahu returned to power so that their plans in that region with respect to Syria, with respect to Palestine, with respect to even Saudi Arabia for that matter. All of these actually be, all of these work out in the way they would like. So thank you for Shalt for joining us today and thank you for watching this clip.