EU imposes new sanctions on Iran over protest crackdown

The EU placed 37 more Iranian officials and entities on an asset-freeze and visa-ban blacklist over Tehran's bloody crackdown on protesters, officials said.

The fourth round of sanctions against Tehran over its repression of demonstrators was adopted by the bloc's foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

The bloc has already imposed sanctions on more than 60 Iranian officials and entities over the crackdown on protests, including targeting Iran's "morality police", Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and state media.

But the 27-nation EU has so far stopped short of blacklisting the Revolutionary Guards themselves as a terror group despite calls from Germany and the Netherlands to do so.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted that there needed first to be a legal ruling in an EU member state first before the bloc could make the move.

"You cannot say: 'I consider you a terrorist because I do not like you'," Borrell said.

"It has to be done when a court of one member state issues a legal statement, a concrete condemnation."

"I think it is time that we Europeans think about how to respond to this policy of state hostage-taking that Iran is now practising," French foreign minister Catherine Colonna said.

"This must be taken into account in our thinking and in the decisions we will have to take in the future."

Iran has arrested at least 14,000 people and imposed the death penalty on a total of 18 in the wave of protests, according to reports.