Iran's Revolutionary Guard: The Threat That The Khomeinist Regime In Tehran Poses
25 January 2013
By Amir Taheri
IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD By: Steven O'Hern Published
by Potomac Books, United States, 2013 271 pages For
more than 30 years the Islamic Republic in Iran has
been waging a low intensity war against the United
States and its allies in the Middle East. This
undeclared war has claimed the lives of hundreds of
Americans, including many Marines and GI's killed by
roadside explosives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran's principal arm in this war has been the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary
organization created in 1979 with the help of
Palestinian guerrilla groups. Since then the IRGC has
developed into an alternative army with its own navy,
air force and special units. Charged by the late
Ayatollah Khomeini with the task of ?exporting?
revolution, the IRGC has created a special unit, known
as the Quds (Jerusalem) Division to conduct asymmetric
operations against the Khomeinist regime's enemies
across the globe.
Steven O'Hern's new book is dedicated to a study of
the IRGC and the Quds Division with special focus on
their operations against US forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan. A retired military intelligence officer,
O'Hern, is able to write this subject with some
authority if only because he had personal experience
of trying to the IRGC in Iraq.
O'Hern makes three important assertions.
The first is that the threat from the IRGC, though
debatable as to its extent and effectiveness, is a
fact that the outside world would ignore at its peril.
Determined to de-stabilize and, when possible, help
overthrow pro-West regimes, Iran's current leaders
have no qualms about using the IRGC in an increasingly
aggressive manner.
Next, O'Hern asserts that the United States, the
principal though by no means the only, target of the
Iranian campaign is unable or unwilling to appreciate
the extent of the threat. In fact, O'Hern's book has
this as subtitle: The Threat that Grows While America
Sleeps.
The subtitle recalls a slim book written by President
John F Kennedy about the rise of the Nazi threat while
Europe slept before the Second World War.
O'Hern's third assertion is equally interesting. He
rejects the conventional wisdom's belief that
classical Shi'ite-Sunni divisions in Islam prevent the
Khomeinist regime from forming alliances against their
common foes.
He then proceeds to suggest that Iran has been helping
Al Qaeda with training, tactics and supply of weapons
for a number of years and may well have been
indirectly involved in the attacks against New York
and Washington on 9 September 2001.
According to O'Hern, Iran used the Lebanese branch of
Hezbollah to establish a link with Al Qaeda.
He writes: ?Hezbollah opened classrooms to Al Qaeda
operatives who traveled to Lebanon for training. Al
Qaeda purchased a guesthouse in the Bekaa Valley where
its members lived while being trained by Hezbollah
experts in using explosives used to bring down large
structures." That Shi'ite Hezbollah should help train
Sunni Jihadists may seem surprising. However, the IRGC
itself had been partly trained by Palestinian groups
that were Sunni, Christian or Marxist-Leninist.
Because of their common hatred of the United States,
they had little difficulty ignoring religious and/or
ideological divisions.
According to O'Hern, Imad Mughniyah, a senior military
commander of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah visited
Al Qaeda's founder Osama bin Laden while the latter
lived in Sudan. Mughniyah's brother-in-law, one
Mustafa Bad red-Din also played a role. A captured Al
Qaeda fighter who had been in Sudan at the time
witnessed the fateful meetings, O'Hern reports.
According to O'Hern, the Lebanese branches of
Hezbollah, like its branches in other countries, is an
integral part of the Iranian government's
military-security structure. Mughniyah was recruited
by the Iranian intelligence service in 1982 and
remained on its payroll until his death in Damascus
more than a quarter of a century later. Lebanese
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is also an Iranian
government employee and directly controlled by the
IRGC.
While O'Hern hints at the ideological roots of the
IRGC he does not study them in detail. Had he done so
he would have paid greater attention to reasons that
could bring together people from a widely different
religious, ethnic and political background in a common
fight against the American ?Great Satan.? In fact,
among the 11 men that O'Hern names as the original
founders of the IRGC at least six were US-educated and
at least four, including Mostafa Chamran and Ibrahim
Yazdi were naturalized US citizens.
Tehran's anti-American message has also won it a
number of allies in Latin America where a number of
new left-leaning regimes have helped the IRGC
establish bridgeheads in what used to be Washington's
backyard. The IRGC now has ?operational assets? in
Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, and
maintains a political presence in Argentina and
Venezuela and Cuba. In most cases, the IRGC has used
ethnic Lebanese and Syrian groups in those countries
as a cat's paw.
As far as the US position is in this low intensity
war, O'Hern's tone remains pessimistic. However, at
the end of the book he devotes a chapter to how the US
could prevail. The first step in that direction,
according to O'Hern, is to explain to the American
public the threat that the Khomeinist regime in Tehran
poses to the US. O'Hern rules out outright war against
the Islamic Republic and questions the effectiveness
of economic and other sanctions to change Tehran's
behavior.
What he suggests, in effect, is for the US to give
Iran a taste of its own medicine, that is to say low
intensity war against it. In other words, this may
prove a long struggle that would not, indeed could
not, end without regime change in Tehran.
Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and
educated in Tehran, London and Paris. He was Executive
Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran (1972-79).
In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday
Times. In 1984-92, he served as member of the
Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI).
Between 1980 and 2004, he was a contributor to the
International Herald Tribune. He has written for the
Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the New York
Times, the London Times, the French magazine Politique
Internationale, and the German weekly Focus. Between
1989 and 2005, he was editorial writer for the German
daily Die Welt. Taheri has published 11 books, some of
which have been translated into 20 languages. He has
been a columnist for Asharq Alawsat since 1987.
Taheri's latest book "The Persian Night" is published
by Encounter Books in London and New York.From Consul To Terrorist: The Only Faction Active oOn The Scene Because Everybody Else Has Left The Arena :: EsinIslam The Muslim World Portal For Islamic News And Opinions
From Consul To Terrorist: The Only Faction Active oOn The Scene Because Everybody Else Has Left The Arena
14 January 2013
By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed
As soon as I heard the name Iyad Ag Ghaly in relation
to the events in Mali I began to wonder if this could
be the same man from the same country? Could it really
be him? Iyad Ag Ghaly heads up the military operations
of armed terrorist groups in northern Mali; whilst
there was a man with the same name who served as
Mali's consul in Jeddah. I called some friends and
confirmed that Iyad Ag Ghaly is indeed the same man
that I met at Jeddah's Hilton hotel less than three
years ago.
We are facing a truly strange world where those who
are legitimate today could be fugitives tomorrow.
At the time, I knew-from those who had dealt with
Ghaly as a Tuareg tribal chief and diplomatic
consul-that he was the best source to find
intermediaries to negotiate the release of hostages
taken in the Azawad region. Now, he is said to be
commander of the Ansar Dine movement fighting the
Malian army, as well as international French and
African forces.
When I read a profile about him in yesterday's Asharq
al-Awsat newspaper, I was even more confused, for this
stated that he was close to Libyan dictator Muammar
Qadhafi who reportedly sent him to fight in Lebanon.
Yet, Ghaly only recently displayed extremist
tendencies.
This kind of confusion and uncertainty has become
quite common as shown by the emergence of extremists
like Tarek al-Zomor and Mohamed al-Zawahiri on Egypt's
political scene. So how did a man like Iyad Ag Ghaly
turn from being a moderate Sunni Muslim to an
extremist armed fighter? Is it rational to suppose
that a man in his fifties, like Ghaly, should suddenly
become radicalized? This is truly hard to believe. I
sense that this may be some kind of political maneuver
where politicians have pretended to adopt extremist
ideologies in order to recruit impulsive youths. These
politicians provide these youth with funding under the
pretext of ?religious duty?, convincing them to
sacrifice their lives for a false cause in return for
a place in heaven! Since there is a general
international lack of will to fight anywhere in the
world, the French-alongside a few African states-will
fight this war on their own before realizing that
desert wars never end and withdraw. What makes matters
more complicated is that conflicts that involve
religious slogans and tribal powers can last for
decades without any side being defeated.
Our problem with those who are keen on fighting these
extremists, like the French today and the Americans
yesterday in Afghanistan and perhaps tomorrow in
Syria, is their inability to understand the
fundamental nature of the problem. These extremist
groups represent the smallest part of the equation;
rather the greatest and most important challenge is to
confront extremist ideologies. Had the West, as well
as the Arab countries involved and other relevant
parties invested their money and effort in fighting
extremist ideologies, this crisis might have come to
an end. Instead they spent billions of dollars on tens
of thousands of soldiers, advanced weaponry, and
combat drones managing to eliminate a number of Al
Qaeda's leaders; however Al Qaeda's ideology remains
the same and in fact continues to spread like a
disease. Most people find it easier to jump to easy
conclusions by laying the blame on one group or
another like Sunnis, Shi'ites, clerics, or even
religion as a whole; however all these groups were
present prior to this and were never a source of
trouble.
We are living in a different world in which political
powers are establishing and nourishing extremist
ideologies and generations. These politicians have the
project, the expertise, and the will to propagate such
extremist ideology and they are practically immune to
punishment because the wrong parties are always held
accountable. Who could have imagined that Mali would
become an international battlefield after Afghanistan?
The West is repeating the same mistake in Syria by
allowing it to fall prey to extremists who are
emotionally manipulate the general public under the
pretext that they are their only source of salvation
from the tyranny of the Assad regime. In reality, they
are the only faction active on the scene because
everybody else has left the arena.
Al
Rashed is the general manager of Al -Arabiya
television. He is also the former editor-in-chief of
Asharq Al- Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly
magazine, Al Majalla. He is also a senior Columnist in
the daily newspapers of Al Madina and Al Bilad. He is
a US post-graduate degree in mass communications. He
has been a guest on many TV current affairs programs.
He is currently based in Dubai.