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Canada Finally Targets Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps; More Action Is Needed
Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Photo: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl.
The recent move by Canada to list the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization marks a significant moment in the international effort to curb Iran’s malignant activities on the global stage. This decision comes after years of extensive lobbying and is a clear indicator of the growing concern among nations about the IRGC’s role in fostering instability both regionally and internationally.
Iran’s IRGC, established in the aftermath of the 1979 mullahs’ terrorist revolt, is not merely a military organization; it is an influential political actor within Iran, wielding substantial economic power and executing the ideological and strategic intentions of the regime both domestically and internationally. More ominously, the IRGC’s mandate transcends traditional military duties, involving itself deeply in Iran’s political sphere, influencing its economic landscape, and most notably, orchestrating complex networks of proxy warfare across the Middle East and beyond.
The word Iran doesn’t appear in the name of the IRGC. Essentially, this terrorist organization is active in protecting the Islamic Caliphate of the Ayatollah Khamenei and promoting the destructive ideology of Khomeinism under the guise of Islamic Resistance (but in reality, it signifies Islamic terrorism).
The IRGC is a criminal terrorist organization with a global reach, shining wherever the name of terrorism is mentioned. The radical thugs of the IRGC are currently engaged in the domestic oppression and massacre of Iranians, and are expanding their global terrorism network abroad.
Strategic Export of Revolution
The core of the IRGC’s strategy has been to support non-state militant groups across the region, providing them with funding, weapons, and training to foment unrest and carry out attacks that align with Tehran’s strategic interests. This has been vividly demonstrated in their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, various militia groups in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and their ongoing military support to the Assad regime in Syria. Such actions are not merely regional security issues, but are illustrative of the IRGC’s broader strategy to reshape Middle Eastern politics, counter Western influence, and promote Iran as the preeminent regional power.
Global Terror Operations
Internationally, the IRGC’s Quds Force, the branch responsible for extraterritorial operations, has been actively involved in planning and executing operations that clearly fall within the realm of international terrorism. These operations range from the orchestration of bombings and assassinations in Europe and South America, to the provision of arms and tactical support to various militant groups. The infamous case of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people, is a stark reminder of the deadly reach of the IRGC’s operations, directed and facilitated by its commanders.
Adapting to Modern Conflicts
In more recent years, the IRGC has adapted its methods and expanded its reach. It has increased its cyber capabilities, engaging in cyber espionage and attacks against foreign governments and industries, which constitutes a significant threat to global information security. The IRGC has also been implicated in military confrontations, such as the attacks on commercial shipping in the strategic waterways of the Middle East, which threaten global supply chains and international trade.
The international community must recognize the necessity of a robust, multi-faceted response to the IRGC’s activities. While the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization by nations like Canada represents a crucial step forward, it is an inadequate measure if not part of a broader, cohesive strategy that includes enhanced sanctions, targeted legal actions against IRGC affiliates, and a comprehensive international legal and diplomatic framework aimed at curtailing its operations globally.
Humanitarian and Ideological Counteractions
Moreover, nations must work together to address the humanitarian crises precipitated by the IRGC’s actions or IRGC-supported conflicts, particularly in war-torn regions like Syria and Yemen. The international community must prioritize diplomatic and humanitarian strategies to mitigate the suffering of civilians, who are often the most affected by the IRGC-supported conflicts. Additionally, the global community must counteract Iran’s propaganda by supporting democratic values and human rights narratives within Iran and among its regional allies.
Strengthening Global Alliances
It is also essential for countries to cut off the financial streams that support the IRGC’s extensive network; this includes stricter controls on international banking and finance channels to ensure that funds cannot be funneled to the IRGC or its proxies. Collaborative international efforts are required to dismantle the sophisticated networks that the IRGC uses to fund its operations, including those involving illicit trade and smuggling.
The global community’s response to the IRGC must also be ideological. It involves countering Iran’s extensive propaganda machinery, which justifies its actions and spreads its revolutionary ideology. Supporting counter-narratives within Iran and among its allies, emphasizing democratic values and human rights, is crucial.
In essence, the IRGC represents a profound challenge to international peace and stability, necessitating a concerted global response. A comprehensive approach that includes legal, financial, military, and ideological responses is vital. The international community must be unified and resolute in its actions against the IRGC to effectively curb its influence and operations. Failure to take decisive action risks not only further regional destabilization, but also increased global insecurity.
In confronting the IRGC, the international community must demonstrate both resolve and strategic foresight, ensuring that measures taken are comprehensive and sustained to dismantle the power structures that support the IRGC’s global terrorist activities. This is not merely a regional necessity, but a global imperative.
Erfan Fard is a counterterrorism analyst and Middle East Studies researcher based in Washington, DC. Twitter@EQFARD.
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Palestinian Authority’s Abbas Offers to Work With Trump to Broker Peace Deal With Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has offered to work with US President Donald Trump to broker a comprehensive peace deal with Israel, praising the American leader for brokering a ceasefire between the Jewish state and Iran and calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
In a letter sent to Trump, Abbas expressed his “deep gratitude and appreciation for [Trump’s] successful efforts in reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Iran,” the official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency WAFA reported.
After 12 days of conflict between the two Middle Eastern adversaries, Trump announced a “complete and total” ceasefire on Monday, just hours after Iran launched missile strikes on the Al Udeid US airbase in Qatar in retaliation for American attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.
The US joined Israel’s airstrike campaign against the Islamist regime by launching a large-scale military strike against Tehran, destroying three key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
Although the fragile ceasefire appears to have since held, Tehran initially broke it within minutes, with Israeli officials reporting that three Iranian missiles were launched within the first three hours of the truce.
In his letter to Trump, Abbas called the ceasefire a “necessary and important step to defuse the crises plaguing the world, which will have a positive impact on the security and stability of the region.” He then turned his attention to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“A ceasefire in Gaza would constitute an additional step to [Trump’s] crucial efforts to achieve a just and comprehensive peace between the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the entire world,” the Palestinian leader wrote.
In an effort to earn trust within the international community, Abbas expressed his willingness to work with Trump, Saudi Arabia, and other global partners “to fulfill the promise of peace.”
The Palestinian leader said he was ready “to immediately negotiate and implement a comprehensive peace agreement within a clear and binding timeframe that ends the occupation and achieves security and stability for all, a just and lasting peace.”
Although Trump attempted a peace deal with the PA during his first term, he ultimately bypassed it and instead pursued the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries.
“With you, we can achieve what seemed impossible: a recognized, free, sovereign, and secure Palestine; a recognized and secure Israel; and a region that enjoys peace, prosperity, and integration,” Abbas wrote in his letter.
Given the PA’s long-standing lack of credibility and widely known support for terrorism against Israel, Abbas has been making promises of change as he seeks to secure international trust and position the PA to play a leading role in the Gaza Strip once the current Israel-Hamas war ends.
The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also maintained for years a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, the PA Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
Earlier this year, Abbas announced plans to reform the system, but the PA has continued issuing payments, with top officials stating they will not deduct any of the funds.
Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005, has also promised to hold elections soon — the first the PA will hold since then.
Even with his commitment to long-promised administrative reforms, the PA lacks public support among Palestinians, with only 40 percent backing its return to govern the Gaza Strip after the war.
Abbas has also promised the demilitarization of his rival Hamas, while condemning the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — an attack he had previously celebrated.
In the past, Abbas praised Hamas for achieving “important goals” with the Oct. 7 onslaught, describing the attack — the deadliest single-day massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust — as one that “shook the foundations of the Israeli entity.”
Other PA officials, including Mahmoud al-Habbash, Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, have similarly praised Hamas’s atrocities, describing them as “legitimate resistance.”
The post Palestinian Authority’s Abbas Offers to Work With Trump to Broker Peace Deal With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York City Jews Sound Alarm After Anti-Israel Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary

Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
Following Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, local Jewish leaders are expressing deep apprehension about their future status in a city facing the prospect of being led by a man who has been accused of antisemitism and made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career.
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assemblymember and proud democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
Voters in New York City rank their choices in order of their preference. While Mamdani declared victory and Cuomo conceded defeat, the race’s ultimate outcome will technically be decided when every vote is tallied, taking into account the ranked choice count. Mamdani’s victory is all but assured.
Some observers have speculated that Mamdani’s win over an older, high-profile Democrat signifies growing frustration with the party’s status quo and represents a generational change.
The election results have also alarmed members of the local Jewish community, who expressed deep concern over his past criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic rhetoric.
“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in New York City, said in a statement. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish Exodus from New York City.”
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who along with her husband Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt co-founded the Altneu, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, suggested that Mamdani’s political ascendance indicates that antisemitism might actually be a political “asset” these days.
“Perhaps soft antisemitism is not a liability for a NYC politician. It’s an asset,” Chizhik-Goldschmidt wrote. “Perhaps New York City is not the city we thought it was.”
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who later founded the organization Americans Against Antisemitism, similarly repudiated Mamdani and encouraged New Yorkers to consolidate behind a single candidate to oppose the presumptive Democratic nominee in the general election in November.
“Mamdani has won the Democratic primary,” he said in a video posted to social media. “It is pathetic, it is sick, it is painful for people who care about the future of New York and in particular the Jewish community.”
Hikind added in a written post accompanying the video: “NYC must unite to defeat the dangerous antisemite Mamdani.”
A little-known politician before this year’s primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Most recently, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”
The same week, an old X/Twitter post from 2015 by Mamdani resurfaced online showing him appearing to threaten that a “third intifada” was coming.
New York City, which is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, has experienced a major spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, with police data showing Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year.
Concern among Jewish leaders over Mamdani’s victory amid rising antisemitism extended well beyond New York.
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, warned that Mamdani’s victory represents a well-known pattern that starts with hatred of Israel and ends with violence targeting Jews.
“Zohran Mamdani’s win in #NYC feels deeply familiar to #Europe’s #Jewish community. We’ve seen where radical politics — especially cloaked in ‘justice’ rhetoric — can lead. It starts with slogans. It ends with violence,” Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow, posted on social media.
“In Europe, we’ve learned the hard way: when far-left ideologues and radical Islamists turn Israel into a symbol of absolute evil, it quickly becomes a weapon — not against a state, but against Jews. ‘Anti-Zionism’ becomes the mask. Exclusion and incitement follow,” the rabbi continued. “This isn’t about legitimate critique of Israeli policy. It’s about obsession. Israel becomes a dog whistle — a coded target on synagogues, schools, and Jews in public life.”
Europe, like New York, has experienced a surge in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, with antisemitic incidents often liked to animus against Israel.
“The safety of all New Yorkers — including Jewish New Yorkers — is the single greatest responsibility of the mayor of New York,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.
“That safety has been deeply impacted by the rhetoric and actions of those whose opposition to Zionism has driven them to work to instill fear and intimidation in Jews who support Israel,” he added.
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), called for Jews in New York to immigrate to Israel.
“As an American Jew and as a human, I am truly frightened that an antisemitic communist Mamdani has actually promoted murdering Jews by supporting and legitimizing the antisemitic rally cry ‘globalize the intifada,’ refuses to accept the Jewish state of Israel as a Jewish state, states he will arrest PM Netanyahu if he comes to NYC, and is friendly with Israel bashing Jew-haters – and yet has been mainstreamed in the most important Jewish city in America,” he posted. “Is it time to make aliyah to Israel.”
The post New York City Jews Sound Alarm After Anti-Israel Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Teen Threatened at Knifepoint in France Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks

Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
A Jewish teenager was threatened at knifepoint and called a “dirty Jew” in an antisemitic attack in France — the latest in a growing wave of hate crimes targeting the country’s Jewish community.
Last week, a 15-year-old boy was violently attacked in Colomiers, southwestern France, after attending a meetup arranged with a girl over social media, French media reported.
When the boy arrived at the meeting point, two men were waiting for him at the entrance to a basement. They held him at knifepoint, humiliated him, and shared the assault on social media.
One of the attackers, armed with a knife, forced him to remove his shirt and dance, then grabbed him by the neck and forced him to kneel.
Then, the attacker reportedly told him to “beg and pray,” repeatedly calling him a “dirty Jew” because he attended a private Jewish school. He also threatened to kill him if he tried to contact the police.
The following day, the teenager found out that the assault had been filmed and circulated on social media. Using the attackers’ TikTok accounts, the victim was able to file a formal complaint.
On Friday, local police arrested one of the suspects who posted the video, according to the French broadcaster Europe 1. He was taken into custody on charges of aggravated assault motivated by religious hatred.
As of this week, the investigation is ongoing, with authorities actively searching for the remaining suspects.
The brutal assault is the latest antisemitic incident amid a troubling surge in anti-Jewish violence sweeping the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.
The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
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