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.

 

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