BRUSSELS, 23 Jan: The European Union is set Monday to impose sanctions on several more Iranian officials suspected of playing a role in the crackdown on protesters, but won\u2019t add the Islamic Republic\u2019s Revolutionary Guard to the EU\u2019s terror group blacklist.
\nThe 27-nation bloc has already imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iranian officials and organizations \u2014 including government ministers, military officers and Iran\u2019s morality police \u2014 for human rights abuses over the protests that erupted in Iran in mid-September over the death of Mahsa Amini.
\nThe 22-year-old woman died after being arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic\u2019s strict dress code. Women have played a leading role in the protests, with many publi-cly removing the compul-sory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.
\nAt least four people have been executed since the demonstrations began, following rapid, closed-door trials. At least 519 people have been killed and more than 19,200 others arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that\u2019s been monitoring the rallies.
\nThe movement has become one of the greatest challenges to Iran\u2019s Shiite theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
\nWhile EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, will target more officials with travel bans and asset freezes, they won\u2019t move forward on blacklisting the Guard, despite last week\u2019s appeal from the European Parliament for them to do so.
\nEU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who chaired the meeting, said that this could only happen once a court in a member country hands down a ruling condemning the Guard for terror acts.
\n\u201cIt is something that cannot be decided without a court decision first,\u201d he told reporters.
\nEuropean officials also fear that blacklisting the Guard would all but end the slim hopes the bloc might have of resuscitating the Iran nuclear agreement, which has been on ice since the Trump administration withdrew from the internationally-backed accord in 2018.
\nAustrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg expressed regret about Tehran\u2019s recent actions, and backed the plan to impose new sanctions.
\nIran, Schallenberg said, \u201cis on a collision course, with not only the international community, as far as the safeties of the nuclear program are concerned, but also with its own people, with the brutal crackdown of the civil society movement.\u201d (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS, 23 Jan: The European Union is set Monday to impose sanctions on several more Iranian officials suspected of playing a role in the crackdown on protesters, but won\u2019t add the Islamic Republic\u2019s Revolutionary Guard to the EU\u2019s terror group blacklist. The 27-nation bloc has already imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iranian officials and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}