President Donald Trump’s controversial Iran deal may already be about to hit a brick wall — and it’s all thanks to rules Trump and his own congressional allies put in place.
According to Punchbowl News, Trump’s State Department “triggered a provision in the 2024 Ukraine-Israel supplemental funding bill that prevents the president from removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).”
This could be a huge problem for the specific aspect of the memorandum of understanding with Iran that requires the U.S. to give sanctions relief, Andrew Desiderio noted on X.
In 2024, he said, senators “slipped a provision into the 2024 Ukraine supplemental that requires State to tell Congress every 180 days” if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps perpetrated drone attacks against Americans, and if so, “the IRGC can’t be removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list for four years.” The IRGC being delisted “would almost certainly be required to implement the broad sanctions relief the admin has outlined,” he continued.
The problem is, “Last April, the State Dept formally told Congress that the IRGC had indeed attacked Americans w/ drones, adding that this is ‘sufficient to meet the statutory criteria’ to bar removal of IRGC from FTO list for 4 years,” said Desiderio.
Trump theoretically has the power to waive this rule if it’s deemed “vital” to national security, Desiderio added — but that would be a “tough sell” for Republicans, who near-universally backed Trump’s original decision to declare the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization in the first place.
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