Findings

Congress finds the following: (1)On January 19, 1984, the Secretary of State determined that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. (2)The Qods Force is the elite external operations branch of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian regime’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad. (3)The Qods Force provides aid in the form of weapons, training, and funding to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, Lebanese Hizballah, Iraq-based militants, and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. (4)The Qods Force is behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the past three decades, including the 1983 and 1984 bombings of the United States Embassy and annex in Beirut, the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. (5)In 2007, President George W. Bush and General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, accused Iran’s Qods Force of aiding militias in killing American soldiers in Iraq. (6)In 2007, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated the Qods Force for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. (7)On October 25, 2007, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force was sanctioned under Executive Order 13382, for supporting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. (8)Section 1258 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 expressed the sense of Congress that the United States should designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189) and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) and initiated under Executive Order 13224 (September 23, 2001). (9)In the period following the June 2009 presidential election in Iran, the Qods Force was implicated in custodial deaths and the killings of election protesters and committed other acts of politically motivated violence, including torture, beatings, and rape. (10)On April 29, 2011, President Obama issued Executive Order 13572, Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria, including the Qods Force, for the repression of the people of Syria, manifested most recently by the use of violence and torture against, and arbitrary arrests and detentions of, peaceful protestors by police, security forces, and other entities that have engaged in human rights abuses, which constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. (11)On October 11, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two members of Iran’s Qods Force were charged in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the Unites States. The criminal complaint against them included charges of conspiracy to murder a foreign official; conspiracy to engage in foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives); and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism transcending national boundaries. (12)On March 7, 2012, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Iran’s Qods Force General Gholamreza Baghbani as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker for the role that the Qods Force played in its scheme to support terrorism. (13)Iran’s Qods Force stations operatives in foreign embassies, charities, and religious and cultural institutions to foster relationships, often building on existing socio-economic ties with the well-established Shia Diaspora, and recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America.