'War
On Terror' Is Now War On Iran
By Pepe Escobar
29 October, 2007
Asia
Times Online
Scores
of middle-aged, mild-mannered, bearded gentlemen - the technocrats of
the Iranian military bourgeoisie - are now officially enjoying the status
of "terrorists", at least from a Washington point of view.
The demonization of Iran
drags on relentlessly as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)
has been officially branded a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction
and its elite Quds
Force a supporter of terrorism.
The latter has for months been accused of supplying Shi'ite militias
in Iraq with weapons that are killing US soldiers.
The new round of US sanctions
also targets Iran's Defense Ministry, as well as three major Iranian
banks accused of financing "the usual suspects"; Shi'ite militias
in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and - absurd as it
may sound - the Taliban in Afghanistan. The banks are the state-owned
Bank Melli, Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat.
The US State and Treasury
departments jointly announced the new sanctions, citing the Islamic
Republic's defiance over its continued nuclear program and its alleged
involvement with terrorist organizations. The new restrictions are unilateral
and aim to prevent businesses and other groups both within and outside
the US - but that do work within the US - from dealing with individuals
who are part of any of the banks, military forces and other organizations
in Iran that were named, including the IRGC.
The move follows President
George W Bush's comments last week that implied that Iran obtaining
nuclear weapons could lead to "World War III", and Vice President
Dick Cheney's speech on Sunday in which he said that "the international
community is prepared to impose serious consequences" if Iran does
not comply with demands.
Sanctions do bite - as some
Iranian conservatives have started to publicly admit. But Tehran won't
be in a hurry to mount a hug-and-kiss expedition to Washington. Cuba
has been fighting a US blockade and sanctions for almost five decades
- and has managed to survive with dignity.
The more than 20 companies
and individuals affiliated with the IRGC that are now excluded from
the American financial system - and nodes of the international banking
system - will still have plenty of opportunities of doing business with
Russia, China or Arab monarchies. They may barter. They may exchange
goods with services. And they may resort to the black market.
As far as Moscow and Beijing
are concerned, they are hardly shivering with fear in the face of renewed
State Department "warnings" to China not to invest and Russia
not to sell weapons to Iran.
This new round of sanctions
is just one side of the demonization of Iran campaign - as US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice was once again spinning the other side of
the same old scratched vinyl, that of preventing "one of the world's
worst regimes from acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons".
The International Atomic Energy Agency still has not found any evidence
Iran is developing a nuclear program for military use, and has called
for the further engagement of Iran, rather than its isolation.
Meet the terrorists
The IRGC was founded by a
decree of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution,
in May 1979. In the beginning, in pure revolutionary fashion, it was
the "eyes and ears" of the revolution, its trusted popular
army fighting the enemy within - which could be, according to revolutionary
whim, the deposed Shah's supporters, communist militants, ethnic minorities
like the Kurds in the northwest or Arabs in oil-rich Khuzestan province,
or Western-educated, influential intellectuals.
The early revolutionaries in 1979 had two fears: a military coup orchestrated
by remaining Shah supporters, or an attack by the US. What happened
was the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), started by Saddam Hussein with the
hardly silent support of the US and the West. So the popular army immediately
had to be converted into a parallel - and soon very powerful - fighting
army.
Almost 1 million IRGC people
- pasdaran (soldiers) and bassijis (young militiamen under their control)
- died in that horrendous war, and are today revered as martyrs.
The IRGC today numbers, according
to their bureau in Tehran, about 130,000. Ground forces have 105,000
soldiers - four divisions, six mechanized divisions and one marine brigade.
The air force has 5,000 men and the navy 20,000, with an undisclosed
number of vessels equipped with anti-ship missiles. Three separate units
man the Shahab-3 missiles, with a 1,500-kilometer range; the new Shahab-4
has a range of 2,000 kilometers.
The Quds Force of the IRGC
- the key target of US ire - may have as many as 15,000 men. They are
specialists in surveillance and special operations. It is the Quds Force
that trained Iraq's Badr Brigades, the paramilitary arm of the Supreme
Islamic Iraqi Council, the party of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim allied with
the US. The Badr are firmly ensconced at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior
- and it is they who have spawned death squads and accelerated ethnic
cleansing in Baghdad. Instead of accusing Iran without any evidence,
Washington should take a good look at what its Iraqi
allies are up to.
The Quds Force has four main
bases in Tehran, aside from bases in Mashhad, Qom and Tabriz and a semi-secret
base in eastern Lebanon. These bases would in all certainty be hit in
the event of an American - or Israeli - strike. It is the IRGC that
supplied Hezbollah with the rockets and anti-tank missiles that caused
havoc during the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in the summer
of 2006.
In bed with business
After the Iran-Iraq war,
the IRGC quickly diversified from the battlefield into real estate development.
The man who actually gave the go-ahead was then-president Hashemi Rafsanjani,
the wily, indestructible pragmatist who is today the actual number two
of the regime, behind only Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The business-minded IRGC
thrived during the 1990s. Today it controls more than 100 large companies
involved in telecoms, road and dam construction, luxury hotels, the
auto industry (the Mazda assembly line in Iran) and, crucially, oil
and gas exploitation at the giant South Pars field.
The IRGC power play is visible
in upscale north Tehran in a cluster of high-security buildings occupied
by the revolutionary bonyads (foundations). That's also where the IRGC
elite enjoys itself in restaurants like the Talaie, with its water fountains
and tearoom. The foundations - many directed by IRGC people - don't
pay taxes and their budget is under direct supervision of the Supreme
Leader. So the IRGC in fact controls an array of both public and private
companies, financed by their own network linked to the Iranian Central
Bank. They also have extensive connections in the black market - one
reason why US sanctions may not bite as much as the Americans believe.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
is an ex-pasdaran himself - thus also a "terrorist" according
to Bush administration logic. The same applies to no fewer than two-thirds
of the members of the Majlis (parliament). Most of the leadership at
the Ministry of Interior is also ex-pasdaran. Five IRGC generals are
already under United Nations sanctions, as they are responsible for
Iran's nuclear and missile program.
The bassijis - essentially
a gigantic militia - are the IRGC at street level. They number about
100,000, but in theory could instantly draw on as many as 20 million
people - hence they are known in Iran as "the army of 20 million".
The bete noire of the bassijis include students (especially those attracted
by the West) and Western-minded women and girls bent on showing off
their stylish hairdos, fancy makeup and curves under their chadors.
The bassijis' main bases virtually surround Tehran; they are capable
of blockading the whole city in less than half an hour.
We'll bomb you to
bits
During the years of reformist
president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), the Supreme Leader cleverly
manipulated the IRGC for political ends, thus preparing for the arrival
to power of Ahmadinejad and his IRGC buddies. Dejected reformists in
Tehran swear the IRGC now controls everything: power, wealth and weapons.
The IRGC is accused of being
involved in all sorts of rackets, from oil smuggling with Iraq to opium
trafficking with Afghanistan. Hard evidence is extremely difficult to
come by. Investigative reporting in Iran inevitably lands practitioners
in jail. What is certain is that the IRGC is flush: US$12 billion in
contracts in 2006 alone, including a mega-pipeline and the Tehran metro.
A few Iranian ministerial officials, when pressed, admit strictly off
the record that the IRGC is in fact a huge industrial-military complex
- not exactly like that of the US but rather similar to that of the
former Soviet Union - ghostly and as Kafkaesque.
Even well-positioned Iranians
cannot clearly distinguish who is manipulating whom in the wide net
involving the Supreme Leader, the IRGC, the fervent bassiji masses and
business and national security interests. By branding the IRGC as terrorist,
Washington has in fact declared war on the Iranian power elite.
One can imagine what would
happen if any developing country branded the US industrial-military
complex as "terrorists" - and any number of countries would
have plenty of reasons to do so. By stretching its "war on terror"
logic to actually naming names, the Bush administration has boxed itself
into no other option than regime change in Iran.
Pepe Escobar
is the author of Globalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble
Books, 2007). He may be reached at [email protected].
Copyright 2007 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
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