Reportedly, Democrat President Joe Biden is slated to drop a group of five extremist groups off of the official Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, has reportedly made use of a notification to Congress to claim that each of the five organizations is now entirely defunct.
“The groups include Basque Fatherland and Liberty, also known as ETA; Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese doomsday cult; Kahane Kach, a radical Orthodox Jewish group, as well as two Islamic groups, the Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, and Gama’a al-Islamiyya,” stated Fox News in a recent release.
“The Biden administration dragged out briefings about this for months, then went radio silent, then quietly rushed it through hoping no one would notice until it was a done deal,” stated one senior Republican congressional aide in comments to the outlet. “Republicans on the Hill believe this was a dress rehearsal for trying to remove terrorism sanctions on the IRGC.”
This choice takes place as Biden has begun to consider the lifting of the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation levied against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seemingly in exchange for just a public statement of commitment from Iran that they promise to play nice in the area.
“An agreement to restore the 2015 nuclear deal is nearly complete, but Iran’s demand that President Biden reverse Donald Trump’s decision to designate the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is a key remaining sticking point,” stated Axios in a recent report. “The IRGC is not only Iran’s most feared military branch, it’s also a powerful political and economic player. The terror designation means that even if Biden lifts nuclear sanctions to return to compliance with the deal, criminal penalties could still be imposed on anyone doing business with individuals or businesses connected to the IRGC.”
The report also stated that Israel was “concerned about the idea, and in particular, the fact that the U.S. didn’t demand specific commitments from Iran not to target the U.S. and its allies in the region.”
Various, and numerous, negotiators within the Biden administration that were previously working on the Iran nuclear deal have left their positions over what they say is the administration being entirely too weak towards Iran.
Biden has previously removed another Iranian-propped terror group from the list during the first week of his stint in the oval office and saw that choice almost instantly backfire and blow up in his face. Not only did Biden lift the terrorist designation on the Yemeni Houthis, he also claimed back in 2021 that the U.S. would no longer be supporting Saudi Arabia’s war against the terrorist groups.
Since then, the Houthis have been the culprit of numerous terror attacks across the region.