On Monday, Tehran summoned all accredited EU ambassadors to protest the bloc’s decision to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization—a move, the EU said, was prompted by the IRGC’s violent crackdown on nationwide protests in January.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that the summoning of ambassadors began on Sunday and continued through Monday.
Other countries, including the United States and Canada, have previously designated the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. While the move is largely symbolic, it increases economic pressure on Iran, particularly because the Revolutionary Guard has significant influence over the country’s economy.
In a sharp escalation, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declared that Iran now views all EU militaries as terrorist entities.
Despite the friction with Europe, a diplomatic window with Washington appears to be opening. Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying Iranian-American talks were likely to begin in the coming days, with senior officials from both countries present.
The US military deployed the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers to the Middle East, however it remains unclear whether US President Donald Trump would decide to use force. Countries in the region, including Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, have engaged in diplomatic efforts to prevent a new war in the Middle East.
The source said the final time and place of the meeting had not yet been determined, adding that the negotiations would most likely take place at the level of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
The Soufan Center, a New York-based research group, said Monday that 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.”
“Some Trump’s 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 Soufan Center said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday that Tehran is currently studying a wide range of diplomatic tracks to reduce tensions with the United States, noting that the Iranian government expects progress in the coming days.
That followed a warning a day earlier by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that any US attack on his country would trigger a “regional war” in the Middle East.
Trump set two red lines for military action against Iran: killing peaceful protesters and the potential mass execution of detainees. He has also increasingly raised Iran’s nuclear program, which the United States negotiated with Tehran in several sessions before Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran last June.
The United States took part in that war by carrying out airstrikes on Iran that it said were aimed to “deter Tehran from developing its nuclear program.” Iran responded to those US strikes by launching missiles at the US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, before Trump announced the end of the war under an agreement “by and between Israel and Iran.”
