The State Department does not currently believe that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization despite the military organization’s efforts to procure nuclear materials and conduct terrorist operations across the globe, according to a State Department official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Obama administration officials last week were hesitant to address the issue during testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. When asked to clarify its position on the corps, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that now is not the time to formally designate the military group as a terrorist organization.

Iranian officials have insisted that any new sanctions from the United States would be considered a violation of the recent nuclear deal and cause for Iran to walk away from the agreement.

The State Department maintains that the sanctions in place on the corps, which target certain individuals and actions, are enough to rein in the group’s rogue behavior. Iran itself is designated as a state sponsor of terror.

“We believe the sanctions we have in place remain the most appropriate and effective tools for targeting the IRGC, and we are making full use of such authorities with respect to the IRGC,” said a State Department official who was not authorized to speak on record. “In addition to Iran’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, we have a substantial set of sanctions already in place against the IRGC.” (Read more from “Obama Admin: Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Not a Terror Group” HERE)

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Iran has arrested another American holding dual citizenship, bringing to four the number of Iranian Americans imprisoned in Tehran after they came under suspicion by hard-line security forces.

Siamak Namazi, a businessman based in Dubai who is in his early 40s, was arrested earlier this month when he was visiting a friend in Tehran, according to a family friend who did not want to be identified. It was not clear whether any charges have been brought against him or what authorities might allege he did.

Namazi, the son of a former governor in the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzestan, comes from a prominent Iranian family. Namazi’s family came to the United States in 1983 when he was a boy, and he later returned to Iran after graduating from college to serve in the Iranian military. He has consulted on business opportunities in Iran for more than a decade.

A relative of Namazi’s said the family had tried to keep the arrest private, and the relative declined to comment. Word of the arrest of an unnamed Iranian American businessman was first reported by Iran Wire on Oct. 15. Namazi was named as the one who was arrested in several tweets by Iranian Americans earlier this month.

The State Department has repeatedly pressed Iran to release three other imprisoned Americans: Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who has been held for more than a year, was recently convicted after an espionage trial; former Marine Amir Hekmati of Flint, Mich., who was accused of being a spy when he went to Iran to visit his grandmother, has been held since 2011; and Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Boise, Idaho, was convicted in 2013 of threatening Iran’s national security by participating in home churches. Rezaian, Hekmati and Abedini have all strongly denied the allegations against them. (Read more from “Another Iranian American Arrested and Imprisoned in Tehran” HERE)

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A court in Iran has convicted Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Iran’s ISNA news agency said on Sunday, but the U.S. newspaper said Tehran was working a political angle by not disclosing details.

ISNA quoted judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei as saying the California-born Rezaian, the paper’s Tehran bureau chief, had 20 days to appeal the verdict. Rezaian was arrested in July 2014. He was accused of espionage.

“He has been convicted. … But I don’t have the details of his verdict,” the news agency quoted Ejei as saying . . .

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was monitoring the case closely. “We continue to call for all charges against Jason to be dropped and for him to be immediately released,” Kirby said earlier.

Iran has accused Rezaian, 39, of collecting confidential information and giving it to hostile governments, writing a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama and acting against national security. The Post has dismissed the charges as absurd. The final hearing in his trial was on Aug. 10. (Read more from “Iranian-American Journalist Convicted, Iran News Agency Says” HERE)

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A senior Iranian military leader warned this weekend that “all U.S. military bases in the Middle East are within the range of” Iran’s missiles and emphasized that the Islamic Republic will continue to break international bans on the construction of ballistic missiles.

Much of this missile work, like the details of Iran’s advanced arsenal, remains secret, according to Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force.

Hajizadeh dismissed the threat of military action by the United States, warning that all U.S. assets and allies are in range of Iran’s current missile arsenal, according to comments made Sunday in Tehran and recorded by Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

The threats of attack on the United States were issued as Iran unveiled new high-tech torpedoes and the formation of a joint war room along with Russia, Syria, and Iraq.

“Some of the threats by the U.S. are aimed at appeasing the Zionists, while others are for the purpose of domestic consumption (in the U.S.), but what is important is that they are aware of and acknowledge our capabilities and deterrence power,” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying. (Read more from “Iran Has Missiles Pointed at US Targets” HERE)

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