Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps must be put on terror group list: EU Parliament

Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps must be put on the official EU list of terrorist groups, the European Parliament said on Thursday.

EP members passed a resolution to reiterate their "long-standing call to include Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the EU list of terrorist organisations, stressing that such a decision is long overdue due to malign Iranian activities," said an official statement.

It also called on the European Council and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to add the Lebanese group Hezbollah to the same list.

The MEPs called on all parties to avoid further escalation in the region, and expressed "deep concerns over the destabilising role that the Iranian regime and its network of non-state actors play in the Middle East."

"MEPs welcome the EU's decision to expand its current sanctions regime against Iran, including by sanctioning the country's supply and production of unmanned drones and missiles to Russia and the wider Middle East," the statement said.

Iran on April 13 launched an airborne attack on Israel in retaliation for an earlier airstrike on its diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital. It fired some 300 drones and missiles, with almost all intercepted by the air defense systems of Israel and its allies-the US, France, and the UK.

World leaders and international observers have voiced fears about hostilities between Iran and Israel, long-standing archenemies, escalating and spreading the current conflict in Gaza into a wider regional war.