Iran summons EU envoys to protest its Guard being listed as terror group

Dubai: Iran said on Monday it had summoned all of the European Union ambassadors in the Islamic Republic to protest the bloc’s listing of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terror group.

The move comes as Iran faces the threat of US military action in response to the killing of peaceful demonstrators and over possible mass executions. The American military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Mideast. It remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force, though regional countries have engaged in diplomacy in an effort to halt a new Mideast war from breaking out. “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,” the New York-based Soufan Centre think tank said Monday.

“Some Trump 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.”