On Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel and the urgent need for an EU response

B90237/2024

European Parliament resolution on Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel and the urgent need for an EU response

(2024/2704(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Iran,

– having regard to Rule 132(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas on 13 April 2024, Iran attacked Israeli territory for the first time, firing over 300 drones and missiles; whereas most were intercepted by Israel, the US, the UK and France, who also provided aerial reconnaissance and defence from Jordanian soil; whereas five missiles still impacted Israeli territory, hitting an Israeli Air Force base and seriously injuring a seven-year-old girl; whereas all 170 drones and 30 cruise missiles were intercepted before entering Israeli territory, while 105 out of 110 ballistic missiles were intercepted by Israel’s missile defence systems;

B. whereas the EU, the UK, the US and others have unanimously condemned the attacks and called on both sides to de-escalate;

C. whereas on 1 April 2024 Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria was bombed in an airstrike widely attributed to Israel that killed seven officers, including two senior Iranian generals from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and injured 13 others; whereas Iran’s consulate in Damascus has been reportedly used to stage 150 attacks on American and Israeli targets in the region; whereas following the bombing, Iran called for ‘punishment and revenge’; whereas the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and on Consular Relations grant protection to diplomatic premises; whereas all UN Security Council members expressed concerns and called for de-escalation;

D. whereas Hamas’s despicable terrorist attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023, during which its operatives killed mostly civilians, abducted 253 people as hostages and took them to the Gaza Strip, with 112 of them having since been released, has had profound and detrimental effects on the stability of the entire Middle East; whereas Israel’s subsequent war against the Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip has entailed a disproportionate military response that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, including many humanitarian workers and journalists, and caused a catastrophic humanitarian situation, including unprecedented levels of famine, due to the population’s lack of safe, unhindered access to humanitarian aid;

E. whereas in the occupied Palestinian territories, Iran has been supporting Hamas financially and logistically; whereas Iran attempted to host Hamas’s political wing in 2011 after it was expelled from Syria;

F. whereas hundreds of rockets and airstrikes launched by Hezbollah and its allies and Israel have hit southern Lebanon and northern Israel since 7 October 2023, displacing 60 000 Israelis and 30 000 Lebanese; whereas Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon have targeted Hezbollah and Hamas members; whereas Hezbollah’s popularity in Lebanon has waned since its involvement in the 2011 Arab Spring, the October 2019 anti-corruption protests and the explosion of the Port of Beirut on 4 August 2020, for which there are serious reasons to believe that Hezbollah and its allies were responsible; whereas Hezbollah was founded with support from the Iranian regime and continues to receive substantial support from the IRGC;

G. whereas in Syria, Iran’s alliance with the Assad regime has contributed to the regime’s extremely repressive response against the popular uprising of 2011; whereas Iran sent logistical, financial and military support to save the Syrian regime, in close coordination with Hezbollah; whereas both Iran and Hezbollah have been actively engaged in targeting civilians and Syrian opposition groups; whereas Iran has brought militias from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to Syria to quell dissent and control its territory; whereas these militias have taken part in crimes against humanity, war crimes and the looting of the properties of millions of Syrians who have fled repression and conflict; whereas they have also been involved in the large-scale trafficking of the drug Captagon, which has further fuelled insecurity by effectively turning Syria into a narco-state; whereas for years, Iran has sent weapons to Hezbollah via Syria; whereas Israel has regularly targeted those convoys, including by bombing the Aleppo and Damascus airports and in at least five airstrikes since 7 October 2023;

H. whereas Iran’s ally in Syria, the Assad regime, besieged, shelled and starved Yarmouk Camp, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, between 2011 and 2015, killing hundreds of civilians and displacing over 200 000 Palestinian refugees;

I. whereas in Iraq, Iranian-backed militias have exerted nefarious political and military influence, acting outside the control of national defence authorities; whereas they have been accused of committing war crimes against the civilian population; whereas they have specifically targeted US military bases, as well as the Iraqi Kurdistan region, including residential buildings, in their attacks, which have recently intensified in both scope and frequency;

J. whereas in Yemen, Iran provides substantial support and is closely linked to the Houthi movement; whereas the Houthis’ attacks have targeted international commercial shipping in the Bab El-Mandeb Strait since October 2023, heavily disrupting maritime traffic in the Red Sea and threatening global economic stability; whereas the they have been holding Japan’s Galaxy Leader vessel and its crew, including three EU nationals, hostage since 19 November 2023; whereas the only UN-recognised Yemeni armed forces are under the control of the government in Aden; whereas the US and its European allies have intercepted Houthi drone attacks; whereas the EU naval mission ASPIDES was created in February 2024 to protect international maritime passage; whereas the UN-led peace process in Yemen has been stalled since October 2023;

K. whereas since at least 2019, Iran’s nuclear programme has consistently breached the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by exceeding the limit on its uranium stockpile, elevating enrichment activities to 60 %, resuming JCPOA-restricted operations at nuclear facilities and effectively obstructing oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); whereas on 13 September 2023, France, Germany, the UK and the US expressed grave concerns about these developments to the IAEA Board of Governors and highlighted that there was no credible civilian justification for Iran’s nuclear programme;

L. whereas Iran has provided significant military assistance, including by constructing a drone factory in Russia and delivering several thousand drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) and (artillery) ammunition, to support Russia it its war of aggression against Ukraine; whereas these weapons have been used indiscriminately against Ukraine’s population and civilian infrastructure; whereas on 20 July 2023, the European Council established a new framework for restrictive measures targeting Iranian military assistance to Russia;

M. whereas human rights defenders, peaceful protesters, journalists, artists, the LGBTIQ community, unionists and chess and sports champions have suffered under Iran’s brutal domestic repression; whereas thousands of political prisoners are currently being held in horrendous detention conditions, many on death row; whereas Iran is one of the world’s top offenders with regard to capital punishment, as it executed at least 853 people in 2023, according to Amnesty International; whereas ethnic, religious and sexual minorities in Iran continue to face violent repression;

N. whereas UN special rapporteurs have raised the issue of gender apartheid in Iran; whereas since September 2022 and the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini, historic protests for women rights have taken place in Iran; whereas the 2023 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was awarded to Mahsa Jina Amini and Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement; whereas the Iranian regime has responded with an even harsher legal environment, further restricting women’s clothing and expanding gender segregation;

O. whereas the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) has stated that the Council can only put the IRGC on the EU terrorist list if the court of an EU Member State designates it as a terrorist organisation first;

P. whereas the IRGC have been implicated in the planning and/or execution of dozens of operations, assassinations and terrorist attacks on EU soil over the past 30 years, including the ‘Mykonos Plot’ in Berlin in 1992, the bus bombing and killing of five Israeli citizens and one Bulgarian national in Bulgaria in 2012, the murder of Iranian dissidents in the Netherlands in 2015 and 2017, the planned bomb attack on Iranian dissidents in Paris in 2018, the planned assassination on three Iranian dissidents in Denmark in 2018 and the attempted arson attack against a synagogue in Bochum, Germany in 2022;

Q. whereas an estimated two dozen innocent EU nationals have been arbitrarily detained as part of Iran’s hostage diplomacy to extort political wins; whereas Iran has abducted dissidents outside of its own territory in order to detain or execute them in Iran;

R. whereas on 17 April 2024, the Council decided to expand its sanctions regime against Iran to include Iran’s missile and drone production;

1. Condemns in the strongest terms Iran’s unprecedented and unacceptable attack against Israel, which represents a further and serious escalation in the Middle East; reiterates its full support for the security of the State of Israel and its citizens; warns all parties against any further escalation and calls for restraint and de-escalation;

2. Conveys its sympathy to the family of the victim from Israel’s Arab Bedouin community, a seven-year-old girl who was seriously injured by shrapnel;

3. Welcomes the Council’s decision to impose targeted sanctions on Iran’s drone and missile capabilities and calls on the Council to further expand the sanctions to include all entities involved in their production and transfer within the region and to Russia, by including more individuals and entities such as the Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran, the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters and its commander Gholam Ali Rashid, the IRGC’s navy, Iran’s Defence Minister Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani, and Director of Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organisation Seid Nooshin; calls on the Council to re-evaluate diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran; notes that the current EU sanctions only include six individuals and five entities responsible for Iran’s nuclear programme; underlines that these sanctions will need to be prolonged after July 2024; calls on the Council to prepare additional sanctions in the banking, oil and aviation sectors to be imposed in the event that the Iranian regime unacceptably escalates the situation further, and to communicate these preparatory measures in advance to the Iranian authorities; urges the Council to evaluate the latest US sanctions on Iran, announced by President Biden on 18 April 2024, and take into account the added value of synchronising EU and US sanctions regimes, insofar as relevant and possible; underlines that the abovementioned sanctions should be coordinated with the US, the UK, the G7 and other allies to the extent possible;

4. Highlights the profound effects of the war in the Gaza Strip on the stability of the region; underlines Israel’s obligation to comply with international law when exercising its right to self-defence, as enshrined in the UN Charter; deeply deplores the loss of civilian life at an unprecedented scale in Israel and the Gaza Strip; reiterate its call for a permanent ceasefire, coupled with the release of the Israeli hostages and the dismantling of the terror organisation Hamas; urges Israel to provide the Gaza Strip’s starving population with full, unhindered and safe access to humanitarian aid; highlights that finding a long-lasting political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would significantly improve the region’s stability and prospects; reiterates its unwavering support for a negotiated two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 lines with two sovereign, democratic states living side by side in peace and guaranteed security, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states, and in full respect of international law;

5. Reiterates its long standing call for the Council and the VP/HR to add the IRGC to the EU list of terrorist organisations and stresses that this decision is long overdue; highlights the fact that several legal experts have stated that a court decision is not a necessary condition for designating the IRGC as an EU terrorist group, as Common Position 931 states that a judicial authority or ‘an equivalent competent authority’ can issue such a decision, meaning that an investigation could suffice to support a designation and that this could be carried out by police or other investigative authorities, such as prosecutors; notes that adding an organisation to the EU terrorist list is also possible on the basis of third-party information; highlights the fact that there have been dozens of IRGC assassinations and attempts on European soil in the past few years;

6. Highlights the strong links among Iran/the IRGC, its proxies such as the Houthis, Iraqi/Syrian militias and organisations on the EU terrorist list, namely Hamas and Hezbollah’s military wing; points out that the Iran’s strategy is to destabilise the Middle Eastern region in order to shift the balance of power in its favour and threaten the very existence of Israel; calls on the Council and the VP/HR to revise the EU’s current ineffective strategy and, in coordination with its partners, namely the UK and the US, to formulate an effective strategy to counter Iran’s global subversive actions; Calls on the Council and the VP/HR to consider including partners throughout the Middle East in the EU’s revised strategy to increase its effectiveness and the diplomatic isolation of Iran;

7. Notes with concern that the geopolitical theatres in Ukraine, Taiwan and the Middle East are interconnected, as Russia, China and Iran are strengthening their energy, trade, infrastructure and defence ties, thereby enhancing their cooperation, specifically by increasing diplomatic collaboration at the UN Security Council and expanding the oil trade between Iran and China; condemns Iran’s exports of drones and ammunition to support Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine;

8. Notes that Iran and Russia have been increasingly sharing critical intelligence and cooperating to evade sanctions, through front companies, efforts to link their banking systems and oil transfers at sea with location devices turned off; calls for improved enforcement of EU sanctions, for an urgent upgrade of automatic identification systems to counter sanctions and embargo evasion, and for increased surveillance and inspections of suspected Iranian ships;

9. Recalls the importance of the principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises, which must be respected in all cases under international law;

10. Condemns Iran’s persistent non-compliance with its legal safeguard obligations under the JCPOA and the advancement of its nuclear programme beyond all credible civilian justification; stresses that multiple credible sources have stated that Iran’s current ‘breakout time’ – the time Iran needs to produce sufficient weapons-grade plutonium – is a matter of weeks; urges the Iranian authorities to immediately abide by their obligations and address all related outstanding issues; recalls its unwavering commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, including through more targeted sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities involved in the nuclear programme; urges the E3 (France, Germany, the UK) and its partners to consider imposing a deadline on Iran to comply with its obligations under the JCPOA and, in the event of non-compliance, to invoke collectively the snapback sanctions mechanism under UN Security Council Resolution 2231;

11. Recalls that Hezbollah must disarm in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701; condemns its active role in repressing opposition voices within Lebanon, including through its assassination of several whistleblowers who reported on the explosion of the port of Beirut in August 2020, and in repressing opposition voices within Syria, including Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp; condemns its attacks on Israel;

12. Urges the Commission and the European External Action Service to consolidate and intensify all efforts to ensure the secure and immediate release of all hostages taken from the Galaxy Leader vessel, including two Bulgarian, one Romanian and three Ukrainian citizens, who have been held by the Houthis since 19 November 2023; urges the VP/HR and the Member States to step up their diplomatic outreach to this end and engage with all relevant stakeholders and international partners in order to guarantee the safe return of the captured Europeans without further delay;

13. Condemns Iran’s hostage diplomacy; urges the EU to launch a strategy to counter hostage diplomacy with a dedicated task force to find means of leverage against the Iranian regime, better assist detainees’ families and effectively prevent further hostage-taking; calls for all non-essential travel by EU citizens to Iran to be banned; calls on Iran to immediately and unconditionally release all EU nationals, including the employee of the European External Action Service currently being held;

14. Calls Iranians travelling to the EU to be documented in a biometric database in order to prevent the IRGC from further intimidating or assassinating opposition members on the territory of the EU Member States; calls for sanctions against the family members of prominent IRGC members who study or work in the EU and for measures to prevent any harassment or intimidation of the Iranian diaspora in the EU, including on campuses; calls on the European intelligence services, CSIRTs, the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity and the StratCom Task Force to actively cooperate in countering and deterring online Iranian / IRGC / Iranian Ministry of Intelligence disinformation and cyber and intimidation operations directed against the Iranian diaspora; calls on the EU Member States to actively counter Iran’s attempts to spread its revolutionary ideology on EU soil, including by closely monitoring Iranian educational, cultural and university organisations;

15. Calls on the Council and the VP/HR to consider creating an EU task force to identify and sanction Iranian regime oligarchs, elites and their proxies active on EU soil;

16. Calls for the EU and the Member States to provide cybersecurity support and free and accessible virtual private networks (VPNs) or other circumvention tools to the opposition in Iran;

17. Reiterates its concern at the continuous lobbying of the EU institutions by reactionary Islamist associations and other lobby groups that do not share European values (such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran) , and which may amount to foreign interference in our democracies; believes that misuse of the EU Transparency Registry by individuals or organisations should result in expulsion from the registry;

18. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and the Government and Parliament of Iran, and calls for this resolution to be translated into Persian.