
Daily Kickoff: IRGC terror designation to stay + Stevens and Levin debate
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
The much-anticipated results of primaries in Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, as well as runoffs in Texas, were overshadowed by the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two adults were killed when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at an elementary school 86 miles west of San Antonio.
Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) beat Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA) in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in the first Democratic member-on-member primary of the 2022 election cycle. McBath had gone into yesterday’s primary with the backing of AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, while Bourdeaux was endorsed by J Street.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) fended off five primary challengers in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, with nearly 70% of the vote. Her closest challenger, Jennifer Strahan, pulled in 17%. Greene is virtually assured a second term in Congress, owing to the district’s deep-red makeup.
In a blow to former President Donald Trump in the Peach State, two of his endorsed candidates — Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) and Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) — fell short in their efforts to challenge, respectively, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
With a lead of 177 votes, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)declared victory over Jessica Cisneros in the runoff in Texas’ 28th Congressional District. Cisneros, who celebrated her birthday yesterday, tweeted that the “election is still too close to call, and we are still waiting for every ballot and eligible vote to be counted. This fight isn’t over. It was a blessed 29th birthday.”
Democrat Jasmine Crockett is all but certain to be the next member of Congress from Texas’ 30th District, after a victory over Jane Hamilton for the safe blue seat currently held by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX).
Pro-Israel America on Tuesday announced its endorsement of Glenn Ivey, the former Maryland state’s attorney, in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. Ivey is running in the July 19 primary against former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), who is backed by J Street.
terror talk
Iran deal critics praise Biden decision not to lift IRGC terror designation

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military personnel stand guard on an avenue in downtown Tehran during a rally commemorating the International Quds Day, also known as the Jerusalem day, on April 29, 2022.
A new report indicates that President Joe Biden has decided against removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list or offering any further concessions to Iran as part of ongoing negotiations, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Iran’s last major demand in nuclear negotiations has reportedly been the lifting of the IRGC’s designation.
View from Congress: “It would be a terrible decision to do anything other than that. If that’s true… that’s good news to me,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) — generally a vocal critic of the administration’s Iran strategy — told JI. “Anything other than that would be wholly unacceptable.” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who has expressed skepticism of the Biden administration’s approach to Iran, told JI that “the president made the right decision in keeping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terror blacklist,” adding in a tweet that the move was “a triumph of common sense.”
Wrench in the works: In another potential obstacle to the ongoing negotiations, a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was shot in Tehran last week, in a move that some observers said was similar to previous attacks suspected to be orchestrated by Israel and may have been intended to disrupt the nuclear talks. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the Iran deal’s most prominent supporters on the Hill, told JI, “This assassination obviously throws another significant wrench in the works,” lamenting that “it doesn’t appear there’s a lot of progress happening.”
Coming up: Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, a rare public briefing on the status of the talks. Following Malley’s testimony, the committee is set to hear from an expert panel including Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz and Carnegie Endowment for Peace Senior Fellow Karim Sadjadpour. Dubowitz, a vocal opponent of the JCPOA, said in an interview with JI that he plans to tell the committee that “the United States is going to pay a very high price for these nuclear restrictions that last less than a decade” under the deal — more than $1 trillion in sanctions relief by 2031, according to FDD calculations.
Elsewhere: A Wall Street Journal report this morning found that Iranian intelligence accessed secret internal reports from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog and sent them to top officials in Tehran, who then prepared cover stories and falsified records to evade nuclear inspectors.