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DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday in Bahrain that the Revolutionary Guards Corps and senior Iranian Quds Force officers were on the list of terrorist suspects and organizations.
The Saudi official SPA news agency quoted a statement from the security services that Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force, and Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai, were on the list.
In 2011, the US Treasury Department claimed that Soleimani, Abdollahi and Shahlai were linked to a plot to assassinate former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, and imposed penalties on them.
At the time, Iran had dismissed the charges as false and had apologized to the US government.
The Revolutionary Guards' Bureau and the Iranian Foreign Ministry were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday. The Qods Force is the extraterritorial branch of the Guardians of the Revolution.
The SPA also said that the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), a US-led initiative in the Gulf aimed at stemming funding for militant groups, had appointed several associates associated with the Afghan Taliban, some of whom were Iranian, linked to terrorism.
The center was established in May 2017 during US President Donald Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and the United States co-chair the group. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar are also members.
The Trump administration wants to create a security and political alliance with the Sunni Arab Gulf states to counter the influence of Shiite Iran in the region, including Syria and Iraq.
(Report by Tuqa Khalid and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, edited by Andrew Roche)
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