The United States blacklisted on Monday Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. “The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” US President Donald Trump said in a statement. It is the first time the United States has formally labelled another country’s military a terrorist group. The designation “makes crystal clear the risks of conducting business with, or providing support to, the IRGC,” Trump said. “If you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism.” The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but not the organization as a whole. Tehran has warned it will take reciprocal action against Washington for its move against the Guards. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a strident critic of Iran, has pushed for the change in US policy as part of the Trump administration’s tough posture toward Tehran. Pompeo told a news conference the designation will take effect in one week. "The leaders of Iran are racketeers, not revolutionaries," Pompeo said. "Businesses and banks around the world now have a clear duty to ensure that companies with which they conduct financial transactions are not conducted with the IRGC in any material way." A senior Trump administration official said the new measure would criminalize contact with the Guards and "enable our prosecutors to bring charges to those that bring material support to the IRGC." "The IRGC is interwoven into the Iranian economy.... The safest course is to stop doing business with the IRGC. If you do business with the IRGC you run the risk of bankrolling terrorism," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, according to AFP. Another official said the Guards have "been a principal driver of violence on a vast scale for many decades" in an attempt "to reshape the Middle East in Irans favor." The designation blocks any assets that IRGC entities may have in US jurisdictions and bars Americans from any transactions with it. It will allow the US to deny entry to people found to have provided the Guard with "material support" or prosecute them for sanctions violations. Those could include European and Asian companies and businesspeople who deal with the Guards many affiliates. The announcement comes shortly before the first anniversary of Trump’s decision to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and to reimpose sanctions that had crippled Iran’s economy. Later Monday, Irans Supreme National Security Council said it has designated the United States Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and all its forces as terrorist and labeled the US as a "supporter of terrorism." The semi-official Fars news agency reported the statement by Irans National Security Council. Set up after the 1979 revolution to protect the clerical ruling system, the IRGC is Iran’s most powerful security organization. It has control over large sectors of the Iranian economy and has a huge influence in its political system. The IRGC is in charge of Iran’s ballistic missiles and nuclear programs. Tehran has warned that it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,242 miles), putting Israel and US military bases in the region within reach. The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but the organization as a whole is not. In 2007, the US Treasury designated the IRGC’s Quds Force, its unit in charge of operations abroad, “for its support of terrorism,” and has described it as Iran’s “primary arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups.”