Guards hold key to power in Iran

TEHRAN, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has amassed unprecedented power in defending the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since his disputed re-election in June triggered widespread unrest.

Nowhere is this more evident in the way that the Guards, known in Farsi as Pasdaran, have taken control of the Ministry of Intelligence, giving the corps domination of the country's security services.

This has coincided in recent weeks with a noticeable increase in clandestine operations by the IRGC's clandestine foreign operations branch, the Quds Force.

Whether this signifies a serious escalation in efforts by the IRGC to stir up trouble against Shiite Iran's adversaries, the United States, Israel and the Sunni regimes in the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan, is far from clear.

But the operations in which the hand of Iranian hard-liners is seen include growing sectarian violence in Iraq, the reported delivery of new missiles to Hamas in the Gaza Strip supposedly capable of hitting Tel Aviv, the reported delivery of new missiles to Hezbollah and the interception of a 320-ton shipload of Iranian arms Israel says it intercepted in the Mediterranean, and the alleged support for Shiite rebels in Yemen that has now dragged Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional rival, into that conflict.

This covert activity has swelled as the IRGC has emerged as the dominant power in Iran amid what Oxford Analytica calls "the increasing militarization of Iran's security and intelligence apparatus."

This would suggest that the Guard Corps now has a free hand to conduct subversive operations against the Islamic Republic's adversaries, a development that could immensely complicate U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to negotiate a diplomatic settlement to the burning issue of Iran's nuclear program.

This is already largely controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, as is Iran's accelerating program to develop long-range ballistic missiles.

Ahmadinejad, an IRGC veteran who fought in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, has appointed scores of senior IRGC officers to his Cabinet, provincial governorships and other key posts around the country since he was first elected in 2005, which was largely due to the support of the IRGC.

That process has sidelined many reformists and moderate conservatives, and one of the main targets of Ahmadinejad's purge has been the Ministry of Intelligence.

Many of its top echelon were holdovers from the centrist administration of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1989-97 and that of his reformist successor, Mohammed Khatami in 1997-2001.

Both are sworn enemies of Ahmadinejad, and he was able to use a series of intelligence failures to justify ousting 20-30 key personnel in the ministry following his re-election.

The blunders included the apparent defections of a former deputy defense minister, Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asghari, an IRGC commander, in February 2007 and nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri in Saudi Arabia last May.

In October 2008 the IRGC was reorganized with a provincial command structure that bolstered its national power and its widening grip on the economy.

It also formally absorbed into its ranks the Basij, a paramilitary force of fundamentalist zealots, reputedly 1 million strong, that is used to maintain internal security.

In October 2009 Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed the Basij commander, Hussein Taeb, a middle-ranking cleric, to head the IRGC's intelligence apparatus, apparently to build it up into a full-blown service.

Taeb, a notorious hardliner who masterminded Basij crackdowns on dissidents and student protestors, had served in the IRGC in various positions since the early 1980s.

His successor as Basij chief is Brig. Gen Mohammad Reza Naqdi, another IRGC veteran. He was formerly deputy chief of the Quds Force's intelligence apparatus.

According to Iran expert Ray Takeyh of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, both Naqdi and Taeb "have a history of involvement in torture and assassination campaigns at home and abroad, and they have imprisoned journalists and reformist politicians on trumped-up charges."

Oxford Analytica noted in an assessment of the IRGC's swelling power that its takeover of the Intelligence Ministry reflects "a continuing battle within the ruling establishment between long-serving conservatives and radicals associated with Ahmadinejad."

"The militarization of Iran's intelligence and security services under Ahmadinejad is a victory for radical conservatives, whose interests the supreme leader and the older clerical establishment increasingly must take into account."