NY Times is in a snit because of the State Department’s apparent decision to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist group. Well, at the beginning of their incoherent editorial, anyway. By the end, they are admitting that the IRGC is indeed a terrorist group, and somebody ought to do something about it. So what was the opening Snit about? It was simply an excuse to take a snipe at “hawks” who want military action, and against Europeans who aren’t on board with so-called serious sanctions. The Times also neglects to point out that this story was leaked to them and to the Washington Post, by people who don’t want any action against Iran–why else would anyone leak it?–and that they, as usual, cooperated in the release of classified information.

So the apparent story fades away, dissolved in the muck of Washington Beltway scheming. The only real mystery is why anyone in the government felt that it was necessary to have a formal decision to declare the IRGC a bunch of terrorists. I guess that would be the lawyers, for whom it wasn’t sufficient to know that the entire Islamic Republic had been branded a sponsor of terrorism, and hence (a normal person would say) any part of it is ipso facto culpable of terrorist activity, and it’s particularly true of the IRGC, which directly kills people, both inside and outside Iran.