This week, President Donald Trump made the announcement that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp would be designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
In a statement, President Trump explained that his administrations’ decision “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool statecraft.” In addition, the President explained that the IRGC is “the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign.”
In response, Florida Republicans are showing their support for the move.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the Trump administration’s decision, saying that it’s a move “that the U.S. should have done years ago.” Furthermore, Rubio explained that “in addition to seeking nuclear and missile capabilities, the Iranian regime remains the world’s biggest State Sponsor of Terrorism and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan. To make good on his maximum pressure strategy, President Trump should go further by ending sanctions waivers in support of foreign purchasers of Iranian oil as well as foreign countries engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran under the flawed nuclear deal that the U.S. withdrew from last May.”
Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, in a “Fox & Friends” appearance, also shared his support of the Trump administration’s move, telling viewers that the IRGC “report directly to the supreme leader” and that “they run themselves just like the mafia.” Moreover, “some estimate upwards of 20 percent of the Iranian economy is run through businesses controlled by the IRGC, and this allows us to go after anyone who is doing business with them, they’re put on notice. We have to continue to squeeze the Iranian regime economically so they can’t finance terror all over the Middle East.”
While on the subject of Iran, Waltz, a former Green Beret that also served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide, called on letting waivers that eight countries have used to allow the importing of Iranian oil to expire once the waivers end in May.
Waltz detailed that “the Achilles’ heel of Iran is not its military, it is its economy.” In turn, “that’s how it finances these surrogate groups all over the world, and that’s what the president knows and that is what he is going after.”
