File photo of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard - AFP

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia said yesterday that it and Bahrain had added Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and senior officers from its Quds Force to their lists of people and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism. The Saudi state news agency SPA quoted a statement from the security services as saying Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, and the force’s Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai had been included on the list.

The US Treasury Department alleged in 2011 that Soleimani, Abdollahi and Shahlai were linked to a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, and imposed sanctions on them. Iran at the time dismissed the accusations as false and demanded an apology from Washington. The office of the Revolutionary Guards and Iran’s Foreign Ministry were not immediately available for comment yesterday. The Quds Force is the branch of the Revolutionary Guards that operates abroad.

In Washington yesterday, the US Treasury targeted Afghanistan’s Taleban insurgency with sanctions against eight individuals who were designated global terrorists, including two linked to the Quds Force named as Mohammad Ebrahim Owhadi and Esma’il Razavi. The Taleban-related sanctions were also imposed by the seven members of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), a US-Gulf initiative to stem finance to militant groups. The center was established in May 2017 during US President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and the United States co-chair the group and Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are also members.

The Trump administration aims to create a security and political alliance with the Gulf Arab states to counter Iran’s influence in the region, especially in Syria and Iraq. Trump withdrew in May from a nuclear deal with Iran that lifted most international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its atomic program. Trump said the deal did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 or its role in regional conflicts. Saudi Arabia welcomed Trump’s decision and said it would work with the United States to address Iran’s support of militant groups in the region and its ballistic missile program that is run by the Revolutionary Guards. – Reuters