President Hassan Rouhani has signed off on the law recently approved by Majlis (the Iranian Parliament), which designated the American forces based in West Asia — known as the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) — as a terrorist organization.

The chief executive put his signature to the legislation on Tuesday, thus obligating its enactment by Iran’s Intelligence, Foreign, and Defense Ministries as well as the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the country’s top security body, and the Plan and Budget Organization.

The MPs lent their overwhelming approval to the law last Tuesday in a counter-measure against the US’s earlier blacklisting of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). The legislation was approved by 173 to 4 votes, with 11 abstentions.

Iran MPs adopt countermeasure against US move on IRGC

Majlis overwhelmingly approves the general outlines of a motion devised to counter the United States’ blacklisting of Iran’s elite IRGC force.

On April 8, the White House had labeled Iran “a State Sponsor of Terrorism” and the IRGC a “foreign terrorist organization,” claiming that the elite defense force “actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

Under the new law, “CENTCOM as well as forces, organizations and bodies under its command, are declared terrorist and providing any assistance — including military, intelligence, financial, technical, educational, administrative and logistical — to these forces in order to counter the IRGC and the Islamic Republic of Iran amounts to collaboration in an act of terror.”