TEHRAN – An IRGC official said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain had added the IRGC to their terrorism lists to deflect the global attention from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist whose disappearance after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has provoked international outrage.

“Saudi Arabia is stuck in a quagmire and it will do anything to get out of it,” Mohammad Saleh Jokar, the deputy IRGC chief for parliamentary affairs, was quoted as saying.

Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that it and Bahrain had added the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and senior officers from its Quds Force to their lists of people and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism.

The Saudi state news agency SPA quoted a statement from the security services as saying Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, and the force’s Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai had been included on the terrorism list, Reuters reported.

The killing of Khashoggi is only one of the crimes committed by Riyadh and its supporters, while they are killing innocent people every day in Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, Jokar said.

Brigadier General Esmail Kowsari, the deputy chief of IRGC’s Sarallah unit, has also denounced the move, saying the two brutal regimes are trying in vain to divert people’s attention from the killing of Khashoggi by such a move.

“They should know that their crimes cannot be washed away so easily through such methods,” Kowsari told Mehr on Tuesday.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed Saudi Arabia’s explanations of Khashoggi’s death and demanded it punish those responsible, no matter how highly placed.

MH/PA