Two reactions are appropriate to the imminent addition of Iran's Revolutionary Guard to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

Two reactions are appropriate to the imminent addition of Iran's Revolutionary Guard to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. First, one should cheer: The Guard kills American troops and Iraqi civilians, is patron-in-chief to Hezbollah, and has a long history of exporting mayhem throughout the Middle East and beyond. The designation is both appropriate and overdue. Second, one should ask how much longer it will take the president to resolve the contradiction at the heart of his Iran policy. After September 11, in a moment of great strategic clarity, Bush said that the U.S. would not distinguish between terrorists and the governments that harbor them. Yet his administration has approached Iran--the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism--as though it were capable of being persuaded to adopt positions agreeable to liberal democracies. (Cf. "Iran, nuclear program, endless negotiations about.") Designating just the Revolutionary Guard perpetuates this fiction, by implying that there are good and bad factions within the Iranian government. In fact, the Guard takes its orders from the highest levels of the regime. Bush has taken a step in the right direction, but a step only.