Debates over whether to designate one of the world’s top terror organizations as a terror organization are enough to make one’s head spin. It is even more confusing, as London’s Daily Telegraph reports, when America, which does list the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group, is interfering in such deliberations in a foreign country — on behalf of the Iranian terrorists, no less. 

The Telegraph reports that while the British Home Office backs the move to designate the IRGC as a terror organization, the foreign office opposes it. If so listed, the Islamic Republic’s top terror organ would be subject to automatic British sanctions, which could hurt its financing and further isolate it. Diplomats, however, always seem to believe that any foreign entity, no matter how odious, could be tamed through talks. 

The MI5 director, Ken McCallum, disclosed in a rare public speech recently the uncovering of at least ten Iranian plots to kidnap or murder British citizens. Last week a prolific anti-regime website, Iran International, announced that due to endless threats it was forced to move its offices to Washington, from London. As the Islamic Republic’s top military arm, the IRGC is behind those terror plots. 

Yet, the Telegraph reports that Washington is whispering to British officials that London diplomats “can play a key diplomatic role with Tehran,” and that designating the IRGC would undermine that role. What malarkey. For the Iranian regime, Britain is the world’s third most-hated country, behind America and Israel. What “role” could its striped-pants set serve in advancing diplomacy with Tehran?

And who designated America an arbiter of internal British deliberations? In 2019 the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced the designation of the IRGC as a terror organization. True, the Biden administration was hungry for diplomacy with the mullahs, endlessly attempting to renew the failed 2015 nuclear deal. Yet, when Tehran demanded to remove the IRGC from the terror list, even Mr. Biden balked, and the Vienna talks collapsed.   

According to some reports, the White House stood tough even as some at Foggy Bottom urged Mr. Biden to delist the terror group. Sounds familiar? That debate mirrors the reported deliberations across the pond. So who would now attempt to overturn a lost Washington battle into a London victory? Could it be Mr. Biden’s point man on Iran, Special Envoy Robert Malley?

“Rob Malley has been lobbying the British NOT to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group,” a former Iran adviser at State, Gabriel Noronha, tweets. “It appears appeasement knows no bounds and has no limits.” Welcome to appeasement central. The European Union this week added IRGC members to its terror list, defying dissidents, including a Brooklyn-based Iranian dissident and victim of numerous IRGC-backed assassination plots, Masih Alinejad.

She is urging the EU to designate the entire organization as terrorist. We hope Prime Minister Sunak follows Ms. Alinejad, avoiding European-style cheap compromises. Meanwhile, as long as American appeasers like Mr. Malley have a say in the matter, Mr. Biden’s statements of support for the oppressed people of Iran, not to mention his vow to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, would remain hollow.