For the first time ever the U.S. designated part of a foreign government, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a foreign terrorist organization, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday.

“Today the United States is continuing to build its maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Monday morning press briefing. He reiterated President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. is designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). The designation will go into effect on Monday, April 15.

“This is the first time that the United States has designated a part of another government as an FTO. We’re doing it because the Iranian government’s use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft makes it fundamentally different from any other government,” said Pompeo.

The Secretary emphasized that the move will “deprive the world’s leading state sponsor of terror the financial means to spread misery and death around the world.”

“Businesses and banks around the world now have a clearer duty to ensure the companies with which they conduct financial transactions are not connected to the IRGC in any material way,” said the secretary. “It also gives the U.S. government additional tools to counter Iranian-backed terrorism.”

“This designation is a direct response to an outlaw regime and should surprise no one,” said Pompeo. “It builds on the more than 970 entities and individuals that the Trump administration has already sanctioned.”

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Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook