By Brigitte L. Nacos
This morning’s front
page and television
breaking news of the Bush administration’s plan to designate Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organizations does not reveal
anything new about the mission and character of this elite military corps which
utilized terrorist strategies and tactics from the time it was established in
1979. From the outset one of the pillars of the Iranian Islamic Republic and
its rulers, members of the corps were involved in the 444-day long Iran Hostage
Crisis during the Carter presidency. The Guards were instrumental in the
establishment, training, and support of Lebanon’s terrorist organization
Hezbollah, the group that held Americans hostage in Lebanese hide-outs through
much of the 1980s and carried out hijackings—brutally killing a number of their
hostages. Members of the organizations were dispatched to Bosnia and Albania in the 1990s and to Chechnya as well. More recently, they were surely involved in supplying Hezbollah as
well as Hamas with missiles and other arms and in the kidnapping of British
sailors in disputed waters separating Iraq and Iran.
In short, there is nothing new about the terrorist activities of this large
military force that exists independently from
Iran’s traditional military. So,
why does the Bush administration move belatedly to declare the Guards
officially a global terrorist organization? According to the Washington
Post’s Robin Wright, “The main goal of the new designation is to clamp down
on the Revolutionary Guard's vast business network, as well as on foreign
companies conducting business linked to the military unit and its personnel.
The administration plans to list many of the Revolutionary Guard's financial
operations.” But since Iran is already on the U.S. Department of State’s list of state sponsors of
terrorism, official entities of that state and its government—and first of all
the Revolutionary Guard Corps with its involvement in terrorism—have been (or
should have been) off-limit for American companies’ business transactions for
years. According to Helen Cooper of the New
York Times, the move “would serve at least two purposes for Ms. Rice: to
pacify, for a while, administration hawks who are pushing for possible military
action, and to further press America’s allies to ratchet up sanctions against
Iran in the Security Council.” It is hard to imagine that the official
terrorism stamp for the Guards would result in more support for sanctions
against Iran at the UN and
in less pressure from domestic Iran hawks.
Instead, what looks more like toothless propaganda may
nevertheless harden the lines between
Washington and Tehran further and obstruct diplomatic
efforts to solve the issues surrounding Iran’s
nuclear program and enlist support for the stabilization of Iraq. In the end, this could work in favor of those who are in favor of using military force against Iran.
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