May - We Need Better Carrots, Sticks when Dealing with Iran
Posted
Clifford May-
In 1979, journalists and diplomats reported from Iran on a revolution against the Shah. They were mistaken. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers were thinking bigger. Their goal was a global revolution – a revolution against the United States and other “oppressor” powers.
The Ayatollah famously called America “the Great Satan.” This, too, was misunderstood. His intention was less to insult than to describe: He knew that freedom, the rule of (man-made) law, peace, and equal rights for both the servants and enemies of Allah are seductive ideas that could subvert the truths and laws revealed by the prophet as interpreted by him. Promoting such ideas is what makes America Satanic.
With this in mind, Khomeini moved quickly to establish a militia, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC. It was designed to be the clerical regime’s “sword and shield against domestic opposition forces,” writes Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (the policy institute I head) in his timely new book, “The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
Owing allegiance only to Khomeini the IRGC grew into “a vital instrument of Iranian foreign policy,” promoting Islamic Revolution beyond Iran’s borders. The Quds Forces, its “special branch dedicated to operations abroad,” became the point of the spear, organizing the assassination of the regime’s enemies, financing, training and sponsoring terrorist groups including Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based proxy, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza; providing assistance to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The Guards and their subsidiaries, Ottolenghi notes, are “directly involved in all phases of the oil supply chain.” They run businesses and front companies. They are involved in international drug trafficking, and they collaborate with organized crime, not least in Latin America. Increasingly, former IRGC commanders have moved into powerful political positions within Iran. Most ominously, this military/industrial/terrorist/criminal/political complex now supervises Iran’s nuclear weapons development and ballistic missile programs.
Last week, the Revolutionary Guards were implicated in a terrorist plot targeting the Saudi ambassador and anyone else who happened to be in or near a posh Washington, D.C., restaurant that was to be bombed while he was dining. Among the key characters involved: Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iran-born American citizen, his cousin, senior Quds commander Abdul Reza Shalai, his deputy, Col. Gholam Shakuri, and a Mexican drug trafficker who, it turned out, was working undercover for U.S. authorities.
Had the plan succeeded, it would have appeared to be the work of a Mexican drug cartel – though Iran’s rulers, their friends and some of their enemies would have known better.
Instead, the operation failed and, as Iran’s terrorist masters undoubtedly expected, many experts have been quick to voice skepticism about whether the Quds Forces could be behind such “recklessness,” and to suggest that perhaps this was a “rogue operation” lacking approval from Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ottolenghi considers that nonsense, emphasizing that the Guards “respond to the leader’s orders, and do not take such daring initiatives to undermine him.”
Those who say this operation was clumsy also are wrong but even if they were right it should be no cause for complacency. Recall that, in 1993, one of the terrorists involved in the first bombing of the World Trade Center returned to the van rental company to retrieve his deposit and was promptly arrested. However, those responsible for the bombing were not brought to justice and, eight years later, Osama bin Laden was able to field a more skillful team to complete the mission. In other words: Al-Qaeda learned from its mistakes. Tragically, we did not.
What do we need to learn from the latest terrorist plot? That Iran’s rulers are not open to engagement no matter what mix of carrots and sticks are offered; that Iran’s rulers view peaceful co-existence with the Great Satan as ideologically/theologically unacceptable; that Iran’s rulers, despite the erroneous reports written from Iran 32 years ago and the many misguided analyses since, continue to have grand and global ambitions – not just grievances and fears.
The hard fact is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the supreme leader they serve represent the most critical threat confronting America and the West. Terrorism is one of their weapons. Nuclear devices will be another unless effective measures, finally and belatedly, are taken to prevent the Islamic Revolution from advancing.
