ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The European Union on Wednesday announced new sanctions targeting 19 Iranian “regime officials and entities responsible for serious human rights violations,” coming as the regional conflict sparked by a US-Israeli military campaign against Iran continues unabated.

“The EU continues to hold Iran accountable,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X.

“As the Iran war continues, the EU will protect its interests and pursue those responsible for domestic repression. It also sends a message to Tehran that Iran’s future cannot be built on repression,” she added.

According to diplomatic sources, Iran's new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei was excluded from the latest measures, which have been in the works since before the war even started and still require a final green light from the European Council.

In late January, the EU designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization and announced a new round of sanctions on officials and state-linked entities. The measures cited "serious human rights violations in Iran" amid the repression of mass protests and Tehran’s continued military support for Russia's war against Ukraine.

The bloc first introduced a sanctions regime focused on human rights abuses in Iran in 2011. Those measures “have been renewed annually since and last extended until 13 of April 2026,” the Council noted in January.

“Since 2022, the EU has drastically increased restrictive measures, adopting multiple packages of sanctions in the context of growing concerns about the human rights situation in Iran,” the statement read.

The Iranian parliament responded in early February, listing European countries’ armies as “terrorist groups” after the EU’s decision to apply the same designation to the IRGC.

Under “Article 7 of the Law on Countermeasures Against the Declaration of the IRGC as a Terrorist Organization, the armies of European countries are considered terrorist groups,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, wearing the IRGC uniform as a show of solidarity.

A lawmaker said the EU’s “military attachés who are in our embassies must be expelled immediately. They are now terrorists. Hosting terrorists in the country is against the current law,” with the impact of the decision remaining unclear.

“The irresponsible action of the European Union in baselessly accusing the sacred Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of terrorism, which was done following the orders of the US president and the leaders of the Zionist regime [Israel], accelerated the path of Europe's diminishing importance in the future global order,” Ghalibaf said.

As the war launched by the US and Israel against the Islamic Republic entered its 12th day, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar also urged the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate the IRGC as a "terrorist organization."

"The Iranian regime's recent actions underscore that its aggression constitutes a direct threat not only to Israel, but to regional and international peace and security," Saar wrote on X.

"I urge the UN Security Council to condemn Iran and immediately designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation," he wrote in a letter addressed to Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN and the current president of the Security Council.