Activist:

Iran’s support for resistance groups annoys Trump

Rasa - US President Donald Trump seeks to place more Iranian groups on Washington's list of so-called terror organizations because of Tehran's support of the axis of resistance against American and Israeli occupations, an antiwar activist in Chicago says.

News ID: 427241

Date: 09 February 2017 - 23:35

RNA - Joe Iosbaker, a member of the United National Antiwar Committee, made the remarks while discussing reports that the new US president was going to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.

The White House has been weighing designating the IRGC – the elite arm of Iran’s security forces -- and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," Trump administration officials familiar with the matter have told CNN.

But, the officials said, Trump did not sign executive orders on the issue after US national security agencies warned the president about the consequences of such a move, the US news network reported on Thursday.

Trump was scheduled to sign the IRGC order on Monday during his visit to the US Central Command (CENTCOM)’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida, but the plan was put on hold after the State and Defense Departments expressed "serious objections," unnamed officials told CNN.

The CENTCOM deals with issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq.

“There are some people in the US and around the world that thought that Donald Trump would be an anti-war president,” Iosbaker told Press TV on Thursday. “We can now see that Trump, like Obama before him, criticized US wars on the campaign but once in office, continued as a war-making president.”

“He began by threatening China, Mexico, Iran and [North] Korea, then he sent special forces into Yemen in a raid which resulted in the deaths of children and civilians,” he added.

To point out the “absurdity” of Washington’s categorization of terrorist groups, Iosbaker noted that he and his colleagues at the United National Antiwar Coalition were under federal investigation for “allegedly conspiring to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations” in Palestine and Colombia.

Iosbaker noted that neither of the groups in question has attacked American civilians or military personnel.

“What categorization would place them on the list of terrorist organizations? The thing that each of them has done is to oppose the forces of occupation and war either in their own countries or their regions of the world,” he argued.

“Trump is threatening the Revolutionary Guards in Iran because Iran is part of the axis of resistance, challenging Zionism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” he continued.

“The US government has no definition of terrorism,” the analyst added.

847/940