Tehran: Iranian Caretaker Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani has condemned the Canadian government’s “provocative and irresponsible” decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist entity”.
He made the remarks in a post on Thursday on social media platform X while reacting to an announcement on Wednesday by Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc that his country had decided to list the IRGC as a “terrorist group”.
Bagheri Kani said Canada’s act of blacklisting the IRGC, which is an integral part of Iran’s official armed forces, was a “provocation” of the principles and rules of international law and threatened regional peace and stability, Xinhua news agency reported.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Thursday condemned the Canadian government’s move as “unconventional and unwise,” saying the decision was a “hostile action in contradiction with international law, regarding the sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of states”.
Kanaani called it “an instance of aggression against Iran’s national sovereignty”.
In his remarks on Wednesday, LeBlanc vowed that Canada would use all the tools at its disposal “to combat the terrorist activity” of the IRGC while accusing the Iranian armed force of disregarding human rights both inside and outside of Iran.
Thousands of senior Iranian officials, including top IRGC members, are now banned from entering Canada, and those already inside the country may be investigated and removed, LeBlanc said.
As a consequence of the decision, Canadian financial institutions are required to immediately freeze the property of a blacklisted entity, and it is a criminal offence for anyone in Canada and Canadians abroad to knowingly deal with property owned or controlled by a terrorist group, according to a press statement issued by Public Safety Canada.
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