(International Christian Concern) Yesterday, the U.S. State Department blacklisted two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their involvement in “gross violations of human rights, namely the torture and/or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of political prisoners and persons detained during protests in 2019 and 2020 in Iran,” according to a press statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. As a result, the IRGC interrogators, Ali Hemmatian and Masoud Safdari, and their immediate family members will be barred from entry into the United States.
According to a report from Reuters, this appears to be the first punitive action taken against Iranian officials by the Biden administration over human rights violations. Thus far, much of the administration’s policy towards Iran has been dictated by its stated desire to reenter the multilateral nuclear deal, brokered during the Obama administration and from which the Trump administration announced that it would withdraw the U.S. in 2018.