EU lists Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as terrorist organization over protest crackdown

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union agreed Thursday to list Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests, the bloc’s top diplomat said, in a largely symbolic move that adds to pressure on the Islamic Republic.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said foreign ministers in the 27-nation bloc unanimously agreed on the designation, which she said will put the regime “on the same footing" with al-Qaida, Hamas and the Islamic State group.

“Those who operate through terror must be treated as terrorists," Kallas said.

Economic woes sparked the protests before they broadened into a challenge to the theocracy before the crackdown, which activists say has killed at least 6,479 people.

“Any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise,” Kallas said.

Other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have previously designated the Guard as a terrorist organization.

Iran also faces the threat of U.S. 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.

Iran issued a warning to ships at sea Thursday that it planned to run a drill next week that would include live firing in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially disrupting traffic through a waterway that sees 20% of all the world's oil pass through it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the designation as a “PR stunt” and said Europe would be affected if energy prices surge as a result of the sanctions.

“Several countries are presently attempting to avert the eruption of all-out war in our region. None of them are European,” he wrote on X.

Kristina Kausch, a deputy director at the German Marshall Fund, said the listing was “a symbolic act” showing that for the EU “the dialogue path hasn’t led anywhere, and now it’s about isolation and containment as a priority.”

“The designation of a state military arm, of an official pillar of the Iranian state, as a terrorist organization, is one step short of cutting diplomatic ties," she said.

The Revolutionary Guard now has time to comment before the listing is formally adopted, said Edouard Gergondet, a lawyer focused on sanctions with the firm Mayer Brown.

The EU on Thursday also sanctioned 15 top officials and six organizations in Iran, including those involved in monitoring online content, as the country remains gripped by a three-week internet blackout by authorities.

The sanctions mean that affected officials and organizations will have their assets frozen, and they will be banned from traveling to Europe, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.

The Revolutionary Guard holds vast business interest across Iran, and sanctions could allow its assets in Europe to be seized.

Iran already struggles under the weight of international sanctions from multiple countries, including the U.S. and Britain.

The Guard emerged from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution. It operated in parallel with the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.

The Guard's Basij force likely was key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from Jan. 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people. Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.

Once they reach the age of 18, Iranian men are required to do up to two years of military service, and many find themselves conscripted into the Guard despite their own politics.

Meanwhile, a notice to mariners sent Thursday by radio warned that Iran planned to conduct “naval shooting” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and Monday. Two Pakistani security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, also confirmed the warning had been sent.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the drill. The hard-line Keyhan newspaper raised the specter that Tehran could try to close the strait by force.

“Today, Iran and its allies have their finger on a trigger that, at the first enemy mistake, will sever the world’s energy artery in the Strait of Hormuz and bury the hollow prestige of billion-dollar Yankee warships in the depths of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper said.

Such a move would likely invite U.S. military intervention. American military officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose Green Movement rose to challenge Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, again called for a constitutional referendum to change the country’s government. A previous call failed to take hold.

The World Health Organization also said at least five doctors have been detained and multiple health workers assaulted while treating injured patients in Iran since the protests began.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that the violence in Iran has killed at least 6,479 people in recent weeks, with many more feared dead. Its count included at least 6,092 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 118 children and 55 civilians who were not demonstrating. More than 47,200 have been arrested, it added.

The group verifies each death and arrest with a network of activists on the ground, and it has been accurate in multiple rounds of previous unrest in Iran. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll.

As of Jan. 21, Iran’s government put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces and labeling the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

People pray at the Saint Abdulazim shrine in Shahr-e-Ray, south of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

FILE- A currency exchange bureau worker counts U.S. dollars at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

This handout image from the U.S. Navy shows an EA-18G Growler landing on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 23, 2026. (Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Daniel Kimmelman/U.S. Navy via AP)

This handout photograph from the U.S. Navy shows sailors taxiing an F/A-18E Super Hornet on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 25, 2026. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Shepard Fosdyke-Jackson/U.S. Navy via AP)

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung agreed Friday to work together to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ease global economic uncertainties caused by the war in the Middle East.

Their summit in Seoul came as U.S. President Donald Trump slammed allies for not supporting the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. Macron was making his first visit to South Korea since taking office in 2017, as part of an Asian tour that already has taken him to Japan.

Macron told Lee at the start of the meeting that the two countries can play a role in helping to stabilize the situation in the Middle East, including Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which has unleashed shock on global energy markets.

At a joint televised briefing afterward, Macron underscored the need for France and South Korea to cooperate to help reopen the strait and deescalate Middle East animosities, while Lee said the two affirmed “their resolves to cooperate to secure the safe shipping route in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The two leaders did not take questions and did not elaborate on how they would help reopen the strait — the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil usually passes.

“We need to clearly define, at the international level, the conditions for a process to ease the crisis and conflict in the Middle East,” Macron said. “We need to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.”

Lee said he and Macron agreed to expand cooperation in technology, energy and other areas. South Korean and French officials also signed agreements to cooperate on nuclear fuel supply chains, jointly invest in an offshore wind project in southern South Korea and to collaborate on critical minerals. South Korea has moved to increase output at its nuclear reactors to mitigate the energy crunch and Lee has also called for a faster transition to renewable energy, saying the war has exposed the country’s heavy reliance on fossil fuel imports.

Macron’s Asia trip comes as Trump has ramped up his frustration with allies. In a speech Wednesday, Trump said Americans “don’t need” the strait but the countries who do “must grab it and cherish it.”

In an earlier Easter event at the White House, Trump called for his allies in Asia and China to get involved in reopening the waterway.

“Let South Korea, you know, we only have 45,000 soldiers in harm’s way over there, right next to a nuclear force — let South Korea do it,” Trump said. “Let Japan do it. They get 90% of their oil from the strait. Let China do it.”

The United States stations about 28,000 troops in South Korea, not the 45,000 stated by Trump. The U.S. troops’ deployment in South Korea is meant to deter potential aggressions from North Korea.

Macron has said reopening the Strait of Hormuz through a military operation is unrealistic.

South Korean officials have said they are in contact with Washington on the issue and that Seoul isn’t considering paying Iran transit fees to secure fuel shipments through the strait.

French President Emmanuel Macron, front left, his wife Brigitte Macron, back center, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, front right, and his wife Kim Hea Kyung, right, attend the welcome ceremony at the presidential Blue House in Seoul Friday, April 3, 2026. (Jung Yeon-je /Pool Photo via AP)

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, his wife Brigitte Macron, left, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, right, and his wife Kim Hea Kyung, second left, attend the welcome ceremony at the presidential Blue House in Seoul Friday, April 3, 2026. (Jung Yeon-je /Pool Photo via AP)

French President Emmanuel Macron, second left, talks with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, second right, during their meeting at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 3, 2026. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP)

French President Emmanuel Macron shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during their meeting at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 3, 2026. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP)