From the Washington Post:

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

The designation comes under Executive Order 13224, which was signed September 23, 2001. You can read that order here. You can view the current list of terrorists and groups identified under E.O. 13224 here in this PDF from the Treasury Dept.

The order says designations can be initiated by the State Dept or by the Treasury Dept. The article doesn’t say which did so in this case. I’d guess Treasury given the focus on financial support for the IRGC. The State Dept has been in talks with Iran lately, so unless this designation is a negotiating tactic, or the response to negotiations in bad faith, I’d be surprised if it came from them.

I’m not exactly sure what this allows the US to do that it couldn’t do before. Iran is already on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Here is the State Dept in April:

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) were directly involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups, especially Palestinian groups with leadership cadres in Syria and Lebanese Hizballah, to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals.

The IRGC was already specifically named there, and the state sponsor label grants the US, among other things, “Authority to prohibit any U.S. citizen from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorist-list government without a Treasury Department license,” “Prohibitions on economic assistance,” and “Requiring the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions.”

Douglas Farah talks about the terror ties in the Quds Force, a force within the IRGC:

Among the top Iranian al Quds Force leaders are the following:

General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Force.

Through Soleimani the al-Quds Force plays an important role in Hezbollah’s operational contingency planning for military escalation against Israel, in outlining its implementation and in determining relevant levels of response by Hezbollah. The significance of this, is that the Iranians are instrumental in planningHezbollah’s operational-terrorist pursuits, and capable of triggering regional deterioration whenever they see fit.

Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) deputy commander. According to the statement of a senior Iranian intelligence defector in German court documents, Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr met in December 2003 with Sayf al-Adel, one of the senior al Qaeda operatives residing in Iran.

Deputy Minister of Defense for procurement Ahmed Vahidi was one of the pioneers within the Quds Force who is reported to have a long-standing relation with Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s chief deputy, dating to the 1990s when al Qaeda was based in Sudan. His role in military procurement makes him a key figure both for the Force and within the government.

If anything, the good news here is the US is officially acknowledging that official institutions in Iran are engaged in terrorism.

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Others commenting are Captain’s Quarters, Wake up America, Flopping Aces, Harry’s Place, Jules Crittenden, Hot Air and The Agonist