Category Archives: Revolutionary Guard

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

Why Iran’s military won’t spoil détente with the U.S.

Akbar Ganji writes: It is fair to assume that any deal between Iran and the United States to freeze Iran’s nuclear program will be greeted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with cries of “Death to America!” Hassan Rouhani was elected president earlier this year with a mandate to seek just such a deal. But he still has to reckon with the fact that Iran’s most powerful military force has traditionally been a bastion for ideological hard-liners uninterested in building closer relations with the United States.

At the same time, any hope that the Revolutionary Guards have of playing the spoiler in a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement will be undermined by the fact that the force is implacably divided against itself, between those who are dead set against closer relations with the United States and those who are likely to support a deal.

This is not to suggest that the Revolutionary Guards don’t pose a threat to détente; its most hard-line factions certainly do. And those tend to be the most vocal — or at least the most visible. On September 30, just a few days after Rouhani’s breakthrough telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, the chief of the Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, labeled the move a “tactical error,” adding that his forces would be monitoring the issue in the future so that it could issue “necessary warnings.” Two weeks later, on October 13, Jafari declared that “the people have figured out what [the reformists] are up to and will not be duped by their provocations in the interests of the enemy.” That same day, Yahya Rahim Safavi, a general in the Guards, expressed the Islamic Republic’s standard ideological line against relations with Washington when he said that the United States had proved repeatedly that it could not be trusted.

Around the same time, however, other prominent Guardsmen were offering a strikingly different message, by way of a revisionist interpretation of recent Iranian history. [Continue reading…]

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Rouhani is walking a political tightrope at home

Geneive Abdo writes: When President Hassan Rouhani touched down on Iranian soil after a dazzling week at the United Nations, he returned to criticism as well as cheers and applause. A crowd of demonstrators held placards and chanted the spent slogan “Death to America!” The protesters included members of the Basij militia, a hard-line paramilitary organization under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The theatrics of the demonstrators reflect a much deeper conflict that is already underway in Tehran, as different factions debate whether Rouhani should have accepted a phone call from President Barack Obama, and, more important, whether Iran should trust the United States to unlock the stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program. Even though Khamenei has apparently given Rouhani the authority to expedite nuclear talks, other leaders in key institutions, such as the IRGC, began this past weekend to express their disapproval. There is increasing evidence that a broader opposition to Rouhani has begun to organize to derail any further progress from his diplomatic efforts.

In Iran’s first public, high-level criticism of Rouhani’s U.N. visit, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, chief of the IRGC, said: “Just as he refused to meet Obama, he should also have refused to speak with him on the telephone and should have waited for concrete action by the United States.” Jafari also said, in an interview with the Tasnim news agency, “If we see errors being made by officials, the revolutionary forces will issue the necessary warnings.”

The operative word here is “revolutionary.” Jafari, defying a warning Rouhani issued to the Guards in mid-September to stay out of politics, is drawing a distinction between Rouhani and the president’s political faction anchored around former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and those who are seemingly more loyal to the values and ideology of the 1979 Islamic revolution. If, indeed, a line in the sand is being drawn, this is a remarkable development in Iranian politics whereby even the clerics of the system — such as Rouhani, one of Khamenei’s advisers and confidants for decades — are too far to the left to silence the hard-liners. [Continue reading…]

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Iranian Revolutionary Guard/Quds Force could be planning attack in Turkey

Today’s Zaman reports: Intelligence units have warned that the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plans to send a group to Turkey to carry out a series of demonstrations that may include a bomb attack on the Embassy or Consulate General of the United States.

The Turkish Security General Directorate (EGM) has warned police departments in all 81 Turkish provinces that they must be vigilant and remain alert to the existence of such a threat. The intelligence pertaining to the possibility of such an attack was delivered in a secret letter to the information department at Turkey’s General Directorate of Security. The written statement indicates that a team linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will be sent to Turkey and that it may be planning to bomb the US embassy or consulate general in the country. The Quds Force is infamous for its role in attempting to export Iran’s revolution to other countries through the instigation of chaos and by acting as the overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp.

However, facts about the force are well-guarded and scarce. The statement further details that the team intends to stay in five-star hotels in the city where the plan is to be carried out and that as a result, caution should be exercised when dealing with non-Turkish individuals staying at such lodgings. The statement also noted that groups linked to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah may also take part in the plotted demonstrations or attacks.

Intelligence data regarding the plan have been assessed by Turkish security forces to be an effort by Iran to stir to action illegal Turkish political groups following Turkey’s decision to host a NATO early-warning radar system and recent developments in Syria that have seen the establishment of a training camp for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a step interpreted as a response to Turkey’s criticism of the Syrian regime for its brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.

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Israel and Iran: Covert warfare raises risks of retaliation, and conflagration

Tony Karon writes: If Iran’s leaders actually believe their official insistence that last weekend’s blast at the Bid Ganeh Revolutionary Guard Corps missile base was an accident, the event is unlikely to make any difference to regional stability. But if Iran, instead, believes claims — and widely held suspicions in Tehran — that the blast, which killed 17 Iranian guardsmen including a senior commander, was the work of Israel’s Mossad security agency (as reported by my TIME colleagues Karl Vick and Aaron Klein and a growing chorus of innuendo in the Israeli media) the region could be in for a sharp uptick in turbulence.

Iranian analyst Kaveh Afrasiabi notes that officials in Tehran suspect foul play not only in the Bid Ganeh blast, but also in the death under suspicious circumstances in a Dubai hotel of the son of a prominent former Revolutionary Guards commander, and suggests that if these are deemed hostile events, pressure will grow on the Iranian leadership to retaliate.

Iran has over the past couple of years absorbed a series of covert warfare blows directed against its nuclear program — assassinations of its scientists, sabotage of facilities and, most damaging, the Stuxnet computer worm that invaded and hobbled its uranium-enrichment centrifuge system — which Tehran’s leaders believe were largely the work of the Israelis, possibly in conjunction with other Western intelligence agencies. And tensions are rising as Israel threatens military action to stop a program whose potential military dimension was highlighted last week by the IAEA.

Thus far, however, Tehran has declined any significant retaliation for actions it clearly perceives as provocations. Some of the spin in Washington had floated the idea that the recent used car salesman-embassy bombing plot was, in fact, an instance of Iranian retaliation, but there are far too many grounds for skepticism over those allegations to suggest that Iran’s capabilities had been reduced to such buffoonery. A more prudent explanation might be that Iran has until now restrained itself from retaliating for covert actions against its nuclear program, sensing that these might, in fact, be designed to provoke Iranian acts of retaliation that would, in turn, serve as a pretext for a full-blown military attack on Iran and its nuclear facilities.

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Israel behind deadly explosion at Iran missile base?

Whether it was the result of an Israeli covert operation, or, as Iran claims, an accident, the latest deadly incident once again highlights the willingness of the United States and Israel to engage in acts of violence that were they instigated by Iran or any other state or non-state actor would simply be called acts of terrorism.

Karl Vick reports: Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline “Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base.” Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. “Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?” asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran’s nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday’s massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. “Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,” the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. “There are more bullets in the magazine,” the official says.

The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week’s report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot “toward the appropriate site.” (See why ties between the U.S. and Iran are under threat.)

The explosion killed at least 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, described by Iranian state media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development and the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of “ensuring self-sufficiency” in armaments, a challenging task in light of international sanctions.

Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel’s threat to launch airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website on Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions.

But the incident also argued, maybe even augured, against an outright strike. If Israel — perhaps in concert with Washington and other allies — can continue to inflict damage to the Iranian nuclear effort through covert actions, the need diminishes for overt, incendiary moves like air strikes. The Stuxnet computer worm bollixed Iran’s centrifuges for months, wreaking havoc on the crucial process of uranium enrichment.

And in Sunday’s editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called “Iran’s Mysterious Mishaps.” The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program — two last year and one in July.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports:

Barack Obama’s push for consensus over renewed concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme have had a lukewarm response from the Russian and Chinese leaders attending the APEC summit in Hawaii.

The US president had sought support from Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao as he seeks to rein back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but he got no public endorsement from either of them.

Obama met his counterparts on Sunday on the sidelines of the summit in Honolulu, the capital of his home state, where he discussed a UN nuclear watchdog report that said there was “credible” information that Tehran may have worked on developing nuclear weapons.

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Honolulu, said there was “absolutely no consensus” between the leaders on how to deal with Iran following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report.

“This was President Obama’s first face-to-face meeting with Hu and Medvedev since the IAEA report came out. The US believes that it needs China and Russia to get on board with sanctions and it was fairly clear … that he did not get any reassurances,” she said.

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Iran postulates first nuclear test

Jamsheed K. Choksy writes:

Media outlets and blogs in Israel, England, and the U.S. have responded with considerable incredulity to claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of sanguine reactions if Iran tests an atom bomb.

The IRGC’s scenario underscores an unfortunate reality, however. After years of hollow threats, politicians and generals in the U.S., E.U., and Israel likely will adapt to the mullahs obtaining a nuclear weapon. World stock markets would follow their lead and recover from initial tumbles. Crude oil and natural gas prices may surge for a while but will fall back down. Arab countries relying on petroleum revenues to stay afloat and Western ones needing a steady flow of energy to power their societies are likely to back away from challenging Iran.

In February 2011 a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate maintained an earlier conclusion that Iran’s leadership had not yet made the decision to assemble nuclear weapons. Indeed, until now, Iran has gone back and forth with the West at the negotiating table. The Revolutionary Guards’ statement seeks to break the deadlock by suggesting Iran’s policymakers should not fear domestic and foreign consequences of crossing the nuclear breakout threshold.

There is history in Iran for such media-based nuclear maneuvers. The Islamic Republic recommenced its atomic program, originally begun by the last shah, after suffering Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks during the 1980s. But even then only concerted pressure persuaded its first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A major turning point occurred in October 1988 when a speech by Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of Iran’s parliament, recommending atom bombs was published by the IRGC.

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Iranian ‘feud’: Much ado about nothing?

Sharmine Narwani writes:

A public spat between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the international headlines last week. Politics is rarely ever a harmonious business in any country, so why the brouhaha over this particular stand-off?

To be sure, the disagreement itself was an unusual occurrence. Khamenei’s very public reinstatement of Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi – citing Maslehat or the “greater good of the nation”, no less – shortly after Ahmadinejad removed him, could only be viewed as a tough dressing down. And then Ahmadinejad unexpectedly raised the stakes further by boycotting cabinet meetings for eleven days.

The whole point of a Supreme Leader – or Velayat-e-Faghih – as conceived by the Islamic Revolution’s founders, is that he is the ultimate arbiter over both state and religious affairs.

Ahmadinejad’s defiant snit was a direct challenge to the authority of the Supreme Leader. It served to catapult the affair into the political stratosphere, and he was eventually forced to back down.

But there’s more to this. Tehran sits at the epicentre of a geopolitical struggle between two battling regional worldviews. One “bloc” is comfortable with the existing US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and consists of many of the autocratic leaders now being swept away in the Arab Spring. The other is the Iran-led “Resistance Bloc” that seeks to end this foreign hegemony and embrace regional and national self-determination.

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Iranian general murdered in Israel’s Ayalon prison?

Richard Silverstein writes:

New and astonishing developments in the case of Prisoner X, known to a source within Ehud Barak’s inner circle as Ali Reza Asgari, retired Iran Revolutionary Guard general and former deputy defense minister.

I exposed the name of Prisoner X here a few weeks ago. Today, brings news from Israel that Asgari is dead in his cell. According to the standard version, he committed suicide in his cell within the past week or so. Ynet reported the suicide story and noted that it was under gag order. Of course, this story was erased from the internet, but I’m posting a copy of the article which was taken down from the Ynet site.

What is so interesting about this story is that you have to combine two different articles (the second from Haaretz) to gain more insight into what really happened here. The Haaretz article, which was not removed under gag order because it was written in a sufficiently vague form that it could slip under the gag order, noted that there are investigations of those who die while in secret detention (the case with Asgari). One of the considerations in such an inquiry is whether a “government agency” may have caused the death:

Did such an agency have an interest in silencing the detainee? And if so, was a death declared a “suicide,” really murder? In the case of the death of a prisoner under special treatment [held by the security services], why it was not within the power of the Prison Service to prevent the suicide or some other form of violent death. [Emphasis added]

I should also confirm at this point that my original source for this story reaffirms specifically that it is Asgari, and not some other secret security prisoner who died. My source, I should add, only confirms the “official” government version that he committed suicide and not that he was murdered.

Assuming that the prisoner was indeed Asgari, I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss the claim that he committed suicide. Prolonged isolation, most likely accompanied by intermittent torture, with no prospect of release or a trial, would easily sap anyone’s will to live.

Meanwhile, a new report reveals the barbaric conditions in which Israel keeps prisoners in isolation — conditions one would expect to find used by a brutal authoritarian regime in a third world country.

A classified report by the Israel Bar Association obtained by Haaretz provides a glimpse into the harrowing conditions prisoners separated from the main jail population must endure.

According to the document, which is the first external review of the Prison Service, the isolation wings at the Ayalon and Shikma prisons are not fit for human habitation and “look more like a dungeon,” while most solitary cells in prisons across the country are “crammed, rancid with smells of sewer and mold, and infested with insects.”

“It’s difficult to ignore the feeling that isolation as practiced today serves a function of punishment rather than imprisonment,” wrote the authors of the report, Michael Atia – chairman of the prison service committee at the Israel Bar Association, and Moran Kabalo – chief of criminal law for the IBA.

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The other side of the militarization of Iran’s regime

Elliot Hen-Tov and Nathan Gonzalez write:

This week, Iran implemented an overhaul of its national subsidy system, in effect cutting billions of dollars worth of subsidies for daily consumer use, especially fuel and electricity. Though cushioned by transfer payments to low-income households, it is akin to a major austerity move. While the economic impact is clear, many outsiders remain baffled how a regime ridden with internal factionalism (and widespread unpopularity) can manage such radical reforms. The past few weeks have seen rumors of a looming impeachment trial of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, followed by his humiliating dismissal of Foreign Minister Mottaki. These are hardly the signs of calm leadership steering through an economic crisis.

But narratives grabbed from the headlines can be misleading, and longer-term developments in Tehran point in a surprising direction. Today, the Islamic Republic is set to become more politically stable, and may even offer the chance for improved US-Iranian relations under what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called an emerging “military dictatorship.”

Although this development was well under way at from at least the mid-1990s, the 2009 post-election fiasco was the ultimate coming-out party of the security apparatus, notably the Revolutionary Guards. Observers have termed it a ‘praetorian takeover,’ borrowing the name from ancient Rome’s Praetorian Guard, the feared imperial bodyguard of the Caesar who used their proximity to power to eventually become kingmakers themselves.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards slam Ahmadinejad

RFE/RL reports:

In an unprecedented move, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has directly blasted President Mahmud Ahmadinejad over controversial comments he made recently, including saying that parliament is not on top of the country’s affairs.

Ahmadinejad was also criticized for promoting an “Iranian school of thought” instead of an Islamic one.

Ahmadinejad has in recent weeks come under fire by his hard-line allies and conservatives over his new nationalistic rhetoric. So far, the IRGC, whose power and influence has grown since Ahmadinejad came to power, had not publicly criticized the Iranian president.

The unusual attack by the IRGC, coming in one of its main publications, is seen by analysts as a warning issued to Ahmadinejad from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with the intention of trying to tame the Iranian president.

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Why Iran’s top spy isn’t meddling in Iraq — for now

Among the many intriguing pieces of information about Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, in this profile by Christopher Dickey, is this: Suleimani along with many other senior figures in the Quds Force actually supported Mir Hossein Mousavi in last summer’s presidential election.

The text message was cryptic and sent through an intermediary, but its spookiness has become legendary among the Americans tasked with trying to stabilize Iraq. The moment was May 2008, and once again all hell was breaking loose. Shiite militias had gone to battle against each other. The fighting threatened to spread to Baghdad. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were scrambling to find somebody to broker a truce. Then the text message was passed to the American commander. “General Petraeus,” it began, “you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.” Within days it was Suleimani who brokered the truce.

What surprised Petraeus and Crocker was not the Iranian’s role. They knew that already. It was the blunt confidence with which Suleimani stated it. As the head of the infamous Quds Force, he commands all the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operations outside Iran’s borders—whether covert, overt, or outright terrorist. In the fractious politicking almost certain to follow Iraq’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, this 53-year-old Iranian general could pull the strings that make or break the new government in Baghdad.

Long before America’s troops occupied Iraq, Suleimani’s forces occupied the shadows. In the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion, he was the go-to guy for much of the Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite opposition to Saddam Hussein. Suleimani’s networks of agents, collaborators, military advisers, client militias, and secret informers give him a degree of power that is difficult to gauge, but it often seems proconsular: “I, Qassem Suleimani,” his text read, like an emperor’s decree. And his real message in 2008 was that he could turn up the heat, or turn it down, at will.

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Is Obama’s national security adviser out of the loop?

It could simply be Gen James Jones’ unassuming manner, but President Obama’s national security adviser certainly sounds and looks disengaged. He’s like a retired executive who got called up to fill-in during a protracted search for a permanent replacement.

A week ago, Peter Feaver noted that a Financial Times article on Obama’s core team of advisers made no mention of Jones. To have been included would have been no honor, yet to be left out of the picture reinforces the impression that Jones has a voice that simply doesn’t get heard and when you hear what he has to say it often seems like he’s not worth listening to.

Bloomberg reported:

Tighter international sanctions on Iran will increase pressure on the government there and could end up causing regime change, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones said.

“We are about to add to that regime’s difficulties, by engineering, participating in very tough sanctions,” Jones said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Combined with internal dissent, the sanctions “could trigger regime change,” he said.

At Foreign Policy, Blake Hounshell dismisses Jones’ prediction:

First, let’s get one thing straight: There will be no tough sanctions. As FP’s Colum Lynch has reported, China doesn’t even have a go-to Iran hand right now, and has shown little interest in damaging relations with a country that supplies 11 percent of its oil imports. Beijing will see to it that whatever sanctions do pass the U.N. Security Council are toothless, as the Chinese have done on all previous occasions. They’ll give just enough to allow the Obama administration to say it passed something, while wringing concessions out of Washington that we may never know about.

As for the likelihood of regime change, Hillary Clinton certainly didn’t give a hint that she sees that prospect. On the contrary, she sees the regime’s power concentrating in the hands of the military.

The New York Times reported:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that the United States feared Iran was drifting toward a military dictatorship, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seizing control of large swaths of Iran’s political, military, and economic establishment.

“That is how we see it,” Mrs. Clinton said in a televised town hall meeting of students at the Doha campus of Carnegie Mellon University. “We see that the government in Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the Parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving towards a military dictatorship.”

The United States, she said, was tailoring a new set of tougher United Nations sanctions to target the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls Iran’s nuclear program and which she said had increasingly marginalized the country’s clerical and political leadership.

Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were remarkably blunt, given her audience in Qatar, a Persian Gulf emirate with close ties to Iran. But they build on the administration’s recent strategy of branding the corps as an “entitled class” that is the principal menace in Iran.

Even if Clinton doesn’t belong to Obama’s inner power circle, there’s much more reason to think that she reflects the views of the administration than does Jones.

That view has hardened to one which sees neither the possibility of productively engaging with Iran’s current leadership nor the prospect for sweeping political change inside the Islamic republic.

The language of engagement is now being replaced by the language of containment.

As the Times reported:

The United States, Mrs. Clinton said, would protect its allies in the gulf from Iranian aggression — a pledge that echoed the idea of a “security umbrella” that she advanced last summer in Asia. She noted that the United States already supplied defensive weapons to several of these countries, and was prepared to bolster its military assistance if necessary.

“We will always defend ourselves, and we will always defend our friends and allies, and we will certainly defend countries who are in the Gulf who face the greatest immediate nearby threat from Iran,” she said. “We also are talking at length with a lot of our friends in the Gulf about what they need defensively in the event that Iran pursues its nuclear ambitions.”

Pressed repeatedly by an audience of mainly Muslim students, Mrs. Clinton said the United States had no plans to carry out a military strike against Iran.

The Pentagon likewise echoes Clinton’s lack of appetite for military action, as Ynet reported:

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Israel on Sunday that the US administration is very serious regarding its plans to impose harsh sanctions on Iran and expressed hope that such a step would ‘not end in violence.”

During a press briefing held at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, Mullen hinted that the US could attack Iran if negotiations failed and that such action could have “unintended consequences” throughout the volatile Middle East.

And if the US is unwilling to use force, that should not be taken to imply that Israel will take on the task.

As Reuters reported on Saturday:

Israel may lack the military means for successful pre-emptive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, its former top general said on Saturday.

While endorsing international efforts to pressure Tehran into curbing sensitive nuclear technologies, Israel has hinted it could resort to force. But some analysts say Israeli jets would be stymied by the distance to Iran and by its defences. Asked in a television interview about Israeli leaders’ vows to “take care” of the perceived threat, ex-general Dan Halutz, who stepped down as armed forces chief in 2007, said: “We are taking upon ourselves a task that is bigger than us.”

“I think that the State of Israel should not take it upon itself to be the flag-bearer of the entire Western world in the face of the Iranian threat,” Halutz, whose previous military post was as air force commander, told Channel Two.

If the Obama administration’s approach to Iran is uninspired, maybe we can at least be thankful that Washington now wants to invoke images of umbrellas rather than mushroom clouds.

As for talk of regime change, that just comes from a retired general content to merely dream that one day he might advise the president.

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Elite Revolutionary Guard’s expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options

Elite Revolutionary Guard’s expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, January 10, 2010

A major expansion in the role played by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is giving the elite force new economic and political clout, but it could also complicate efforts by the United States and its allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts.

Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard say its growth represents a logical expansion for an organization that is not a military force but a popular movement that protects the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard’s expanded economic role is mirrored by a greater role in politics and security since the disputed presidential election in June, which the government says was won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide but which the opposition says was stolen.

U.S. officials consider the Guard a ripe target for sanctions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program because of the group’s central role in repressing post-election opposition protests. The officials are also concerned that broader-based sanctions risk alienating the Iranian public at a time when the government here faces protests from an energized opposition. But they also know that because of the Guard’s growing economic influence, sanctions on it could pinch the broader Iranian public as well.

Supporters and opponents alike say the Guard has dramatically expanded its reach into Iran’s economy, with vast investments in thousands of companies across a range of sectors. Working through its private-sector arm, the group operates Tehran’s international airport, builds the nation’s highways and constructs communications systems. It also manages Iran’s weapons manufacturing business, including its controversial missile program. [continued…]

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US Jewish community leaders favor bonehead approach with Iran

US Jewish community leaders don’t want to “try to become too smart” dealing with Iran
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, December 30, 2009

As anti-government protests — and government repression — flare in Iran, Jewish groups remain focused on the issue of nuclear proliferation there, prioritizing this problem over concern for the country’s opposition movement.

In interviews, Jewish leaders voiced sympathy for the cause of democracy backed by the protesters. But even as the administration is reportedly considering a shift to a strategy of narrow, targeted sanctions toward Iran — in part to take account of the surging protest movement — the Jewish community remains committed to more sweeping sanctions that Iran’s democracy activists decry as harmful to their cause.

The proliferation issue, Jewish activists say, should come first.

“For us, this was always the primary concern, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel,” said Meagan Buren, director of research and training at The Israel Project, a pro-Israel group active on the Iranian issue. [continued…]

In the face of protests, Iran’s leaders are at an impasse
By Ray Takeyh, Washington Post, December 31, 2009

The mayhem that has swept over Iran in the past few days is once more calling into question the Islamic Republic’s longevity. Recent events are eerily reminiscent of the revolution that displaced the monarchy in 1979: A fragmented, illegitimate state led by cruel yet indecisive men is suddenly confronting an opposition movement that it cannot fully apprehend. It is premature to proclaim the immediate demise of the theocratic regime. Iran may well be entering a prolonged period of chaos and violence. In the aftermath of recent disturbances, however, it is obvious that the lifespan of the Islamic Republic has been considerably shortened.

In retrospect, the regime’s most momentous, and disastrous, decision was its refusal to offer any compromises to an angered nation after the fraudulent presidential election in June. The modest demands of establishment figures such as Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, including for the release of political prisoners and restoring popular trust (via measures such as respecting the rule of law and opening up the media), was dismissed by an arrogant regime confident of its power.

Disillusioned elites and protesters who had taken to the streets could have been unified, or their resentment assuaged, by a pledge by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the next election to be free and fair, for government to become more inclusive or for limits to be imposed on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s prerogatives. Today, such concessions would be seen as a sign of weakness and would embolden the opposition. The regime no longer has a political path out of its predicament. Ironically, this was the shah’s dilemma, as he made concessions too late to fortify his power and broaden the social base of his government. [continued…]

Iran regime drums up its own crowds to oppose Green Movement
By Iason Athanasiadis, Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 2009

On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic of Iran reacted to last Sunday’s violent demonstrations by marshaling supporters in countrywide demonstrations and launching a media offensive against the opposition Green Movement.

At least 37 people were killed Sunday on the deadliest day of rioting since June’s disputed presidential election, which saw hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to office amid widespread elections of fraud. For the first time, demonstrators switched from nonviolent tactics to engage the police with stones and batons. In response, the police fired tear-gas and bullets.

Government-funded newspapers lashed out Wednesday at the thousands of demonstrators who fought running battles with security forces during Shiite Islam’s major festival, labeling them “apostates” and calling for their “arrest and execution.” [continued…]

Regime wages a quiet war on ‘star students’ of Iran
By Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2009

Behind the drama unfolding in the streets of Iran, the regime is quietly clamping down on some of the nation’s best students by derailing their academic and professional careers.

On Wednesday, progovernment militia attacked and beat students at a school in northeastern Iran. Since last Sunday’s massive protests nationwide, dozens of university students have been arrested as part of an aggressive policy against what are known as Iran’s “star students.”

In most places, being a star means ranking top of the class, but in Iran it means your name appears on a list of students considered a threat by the intelligence ministry. It also means a partial or complete ban from education.

The term comes from the fact that some students have learned of their status by seeing stars printed next to their names on test results.

Mehrnoush Karimi, a 24-year-old law-school hopeful, found out in August that she was starred. She ranked 55 on this year’s national entrance exam for law schools, out of more than 70,000 test-takers. That score should have guaranteed her a seat at the school of her choice. Instead, the government told her she wouldn’t be attending law school due to her “star” status. [continued…]

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Why we should still talk with Iran

Why we should still talk with Iran
By Marziar Bahari, Washington Post, November 26, 2009

Since I was released from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison last month, the questions have come again and again: Can we still talk to these people? Should the Obama administration engage in dialogue with Iran? What should the West do in nuclear negotiations? After being jailed, interrogated and beaten by the Revolutionary Guards for 118 days for reporting honestly on the disputed June 12 presidential elections, I am often expected to oppose any dialogue. But the West still needs Iran and should continue talking to it — no matter what it has done to people like me.

Inside Evin, I was forced to confess that I was part of an insidious Western media conspiracy to overthrow the regime. I was forced to apologize to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. I was released as suddenly as I was arrested, without explanation. But my interrogator told me to send a message to the world: “We are a superpower. America’s power is waning, and we will soon overtake them. Now that Americans have started this war against us, we will not let them rest in peace.” He paused, perhaps realizing that he sounded defensive. I was a jailed journalist wearing a blindfold, not some sort of spy. (I’m not even American.) He changed the subject to “soft” war, a term Tehran uses to refer to an imaginary war that it says is promoted by the media against the “holy government of the Islamic Republic.” “We will answer their attacks with all our might,” he said.

The Revolutionary Guards are a schizophrenic bunch, plagued by both deep insecurities and a superiority complex. They have ambitions to take over the government and expand their business empire in Iran. At the same time, they are terrified of individuals and groups that question their grip on power. The Guards are the real power base of Khamenei. They are the main supporters of his claim to be Allah’s representative on Earth. One of the most serious charges against me was insulting Khamenei. In a private e-mail I had wondered whether Khamenei has been blinded by power and had lost touch with his people, and if that was why he was answering people’s peaceful demands with brute force. That was enough for my interrogator to kick and punch me for days and to threaten me with execution. [continued…]

Iranian-American faces new spying charge
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, November 26, 2009

An Iranian-American scholar, Kian Tajbakhsh, already serving a 15-year prison sentence for spying, is facing a new charge of spying, a family member said Wednesday.

Mr. Tajbakhsh told his wife during a visit at Evin prison in Tehran that he was taken before the Revolutionary Court on Monday, where a judge read new charges against him of “spying for the George Soros foundation,” a reference to the Open Society Institute, a pro-democracy group founded by Mr. Soros, a prominent financier and philanthropist. The accusation was brought by the intelligence section of the Revolutionary Guards, said the family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of complicating the case.

Mr. Tajbakhsh, an urban planner with a doctorate from Columbia University, was arrested in June after protests broke out over that month’s disputed presidential election, which the opposition says was fraudulent. [continued…]

Hezbollah’s Man in Iran
By Meir Javedanfar, RealClearWorld, November 20, 2009

Ever since his right arm was blown off in Iran’s Damascus embassy in the early 1980’s, he has become more careful about where he goes, and whom with. Some Iranians believe that the beautiful book on Shiite Islam which contained the bomb was sent by the Israelis to Iran’s embassy in Damascus, where he had been working. According to Mohtashamipour, he is lucky that he placed the book on the table first, and opened it sideways. Had he opened it in front of his face, his head would have been ripped off from the explosion.

Although it cannot be confirmed, there is reason to believe the accusations suggesting Israel’s involvement. Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour is, after all, the Iranian who established Hezbollah in Lebanon. The first man who tried and failed was Mostafa Chamran. The U.S.-educated Chamran had a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He was then hired as a senior research staff scientist at Bell Laboratories and NASA. However, once the Islamic opposition against the Shah grew, the religious Chamran found his calling back in Iran amongst his fellow revolutionaries. A fervent Islamist who later became Iran’s Defense Minister, he tried at the beginning of 1980 to establish a pro-Iranian group amongst Lebanon’s Shiites. His main target was the Amal movement, which back then was the main representative of the Shiites in Lebanon’s political arena. However, he found that he was unable to convince them to accept Iran’s Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurists) system, whereby Iran’s Supreme Leader would be accepted by them as God’s representative on earth to all the Shiites. Chamran was killed on the battlefront during the war against Iraq in 1981.

In 1982, Mohtashamipour succeeded where Chamran had failed by convincing the new Hezbollah movement to accept Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious authority. The rest, as they say, is history.

You would be forgiven for thinking that Mohtashamipour is treated like a hero in Iran, but the reality is quite different. Many conservatives hate him; despite the fact that he created what many believe is Islamic Iran’s most successful political and military ally in the Middle East. The reason is simple: he is a reformist. [continued…]

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Iran says U.S., Britain behind attack

Iran says U.S., Britain behind attack
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 19, 2009

Iranian officials claimed Monday that they had evidence of American and British involvement in the country’s worst suicide bombing attacks in years, raising tensions as Iran meets with Western nations for another round of delicate talks on its nuclear program.

At least five commanders of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed and dozens of other people were left dead and wounded on Sunday in two bombings in the restive southeast along Iran’s frontier with Pakistan, according to Iranian state news agencies.

The coordinated strike, one of the largest against the Guards in the region, appeared to mark an escalation in hostilities between Iran’s leadership and the Baluchi ethnic minority. Iranian officials accused foreign enemies of supporting the insurgents, singling out the intelligence agencies of United States, Britain and Pakistan. [continued…]

Iran accuses Pakistan over attack
BBC, October 19, 2009

Iran’s president has accused Pakistani agents of involvement in a suicide bombing in south-east of the country targeting a group of the elite Revolutionary Guards force.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Pakistan to arrest the attackers, who he said had entered Iran from Pakistan. [continued…]

Volatile Sistan-Baluchistan Region Is Base for Insurgents
By Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2009

Sunni insurgency in Sistan-Baluchistan has presented Tehran with one of its most vexing domestic security problems. The region, which is located in Iran’s southeast corner, borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is one of the largest and poorest of Iran’s 30 provinces.

Sistan-Baluchistan is home to a large concentration of Sunni Muslims. Ethnic Baluchi tribes are prevalent in the region, which straddles all three countries. The province’s border areas are considered key smuggling routes for products including opium.

Increasingly, Tehran has grown worried about the influence of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan on criminal and militant groups operating on the Iranian side of the border. [continued…]

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Iran Guard commanders said to be killed in blast

Iran Guard commanders said to be killed in blast
AP, October 18, 2009

A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency.

The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the most high-profile strike against security forces in an outlaw region of armed tribal groups, drug smugglers and Sunni rebels known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised sharp retaliation. But a sweeping offensive by authorities is unlikely. [continued…]

Maziar Bahari released
Newsweek, October 17, 2009

Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, imprisoned in Tehran since June 21, was released from Evin Prison on bail Saturday. Iranian authorities did not specify the reasons behind the release, but Bahari, 42, is expecting his first child on Oct. 26 and the mother has experienced serious health complications. Humanitarian considerations were presumed to have played a role in the decision. In a statement, the magazine said, “We are relieved that Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari is home with his family today. We would like to thank all of those who supported Maziar through this long and uncertain period.” [continued…]

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Iran ‘has secret nuclear arms plan’

Iran ‘has secret nuclear arms plan’
By James Blitz, Daniel Dombey and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Financial Times, September 29, 2009

Britain’s intelligence services say that Iran has been secretly designing a nuclear warhead “since late 2004 or early 2005”, an assessment that suggests Tehran has embarked on the final steps towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

As world powers prepare to confront Iran on Thursday on its nuclear ambitions, the Financial Times has learnt that the UK now judges that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, ordered the resumption of the country’s weapons programme four years ago. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — The American line is still, we’re all looking at the same intelligence but their are a variety of ways it can be interpreted. British intelligence is making an assertion which, if true, should be backed up by hard evidence. The US position implies that it regards this evidence as weak.

In dispute with Iran, path to Iraq is in spotlight
By Scott Shane, New York Times, September 30, 2009

Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said that ever since 1992, American officials had claimed that Iran was just a few years away from a nuclear bomb. Like Saddam Hussein, the clerical government in Iran is “despised,” he said, leading to worst-case assumptions.

“In 2002, it seemed utterly naïve to believe Saddam didn’t have a program,” Mr. Sick said. Now, the notion that Iran is not racing to build a bomb is similarly excluded from serious discussion, he said.

Mr. Sick, like some in the intelligence community, said he believed that Iran might intend to stop short of building a weapon while creating “breakout capability” — the ability to make a bomb in a matter of months in the future. That chain of events might allow room for later intervention.

Without actually constructing a bomb, Iran could gain the influence of being an almost nuclear power, without facing the repercussions that would ensue if it finished the job.

Greg Thielmann, an intelligence analyst in the State Department before the Iraq war, said he believed that the Iran intelligence assessments were far more balanced, in part because there was not the urgent pressure from the White House to reach a particular conclusion, as there was in 2002. But he said he was bothered by what he said was an exaggerated sense of crisis over the Iranian nuclear issue.

“Some people are saying time’s running out and we have to act by the end of the year,” said Mr. Thielmann, now a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association. “I’ve been arguing that we have years, not months. The facts argue for a calmer approach.” [continued…]

Iran offers conflicting messages
By Paul Richter and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2009

Tehran offers remarks by turns defiant and cooperative, leaving diplomats unsure if it will take seriously this week’s nuclear talks in Geneva. [continued…]

Iran is seeking a ‘two-way street’ at talks
By Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, September 30, 2009

The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said Tuesday that talks between Iran and six major powers, which are to take place on Thursday, must be a “two-way street” and not just a long list of demands focused on his country’s nuclear program. [continued…]

Israel mutes its rhetoric against Iran as talks loom
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2009

Israeli leaders say they are willing to wait as President Obama plays out his strategy of negotiating with Iran while threatening stronger world sanctions if the talks fail. [continued…]

Iran plant could defer Israel strike
By Amy Teibel, AP, September 30, 2009

It may seem counterintuitive, but the news that Iran has a second, clandestine uranium enrichment plant, and has just test-fired long-range missiles, could actually put off any plans for a quick Israeli strike. [continued…]

China’s ties with Iran complicate diplomacy
By Michael Wines, New York Times, September 30, 2009

Leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee swept into Beijing last month to meet with Chinese officials, carrying a plea from Washington: if Iran were to be kept from developing nuclear weapons, China would have to throw more diplomatic weight behind the cause.

In fact, the appeal had been largely answered even before the legislators arrived.

In June, China National Petroleum signed a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars natural gas field in Iran. In July, Iran invited Chinese companies to join a $42.8 billion project to build seven oil refineries and a 1,019-mile trans-Iran pipeline. And in August, almost as the Americans arrived in China, Tehran and Beijing struck another deal, this time for $3 billion, that will pave the way for China to help Iran expand two more oil refineries. [continued…]

Iran Guards group buys 50 pct stake in telecoms firm
By Hashem Kalantari, Reuters, September 30, 2009

A consortium affiliated to the elite Revolutionary Guards bought 50 percent plus one share in Iran’s state telecommunications company for the equivalent of around $7.8 billion, Iranian media reported on Sunday. [continued…]

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