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The Sepah Pasdaran: Changing Tides in Iran’s Power
Paradigm
The role of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) has featured minimally in efforts
to explain the country's internal political
dynamics, and when it does feature, it tends
to be
reduced to a hidden hand of the clerical
establishment. This understanding of the IRGC is
anachronistic, as external and internal factors have
transformed the body
into possibly the sole inheritor of Iran's future.
The United States would do well to incorporate this
into its wider Middle East Policy.
By Reza Zarabi
In
attempting to decipher Iran’s hierarchy of power, there
has always been some bewilderment concerning who are
Tehran's decision makers. After the 1979 revolution
ousted Iran’s former monarch, it was widely assumed
that, given the country’s new name - the Islamic
Republic of Iran - power would emanate primarily
from the recently emboldened clerical establishment.
However, Iran’s incipient political framework described
itself as a “republic” with newly-formed offices such as
the President and the Prime Minister (of which the
latter has since been eliminated) being introduced to
the nation. Concepts such as general elections,
political parties, and the overnight rise of pious
apparatchiks at times falsely portrayed the Iranian
government as being some type of Islamic democracy.
The
obscure nature of Iran’s power structure - often
exploited by the establishment - ultimately explains the
historical deportment of certain Western governments
towards the Islamic Republic. As a result of contrasting
internal political forces, the precarious nature of the
country’s economy, and the danger posed by traditional
threats like the United States, Iran has recently
undergone a political evolution that may position it to
be on the verge of a new era, not only in terms of
domestic politics but also concerning its role
internationally; a reality that will ultimately change
the global perception of who in Iran wields power.
As the
ulama (clergy) of Khomeini’s generation gradually
meet their demise, only to be followed by
a feeble and
increasingly irrelevant group of new clerics, the tides
of power within the Islamic Republic are saliently
shifting in the direction of the Revolutionary Guards of
Iran, the primordial vanguards of Iran’s Revolution.
This transformation will produce ramifications far past
the Iranian borders yet, if met with a sensible approach
by Western leaders, can actually alter the current
Middle East realities for the better.
The
Edifice and its inner disparities
Following the 1979 revolution, a cogent hierarchal
foundation was constructed that amalgamated both
clerical and non-clerical institutions whose domestic
and international objectives supposedly mirrored each
other. Contrary to Western beliefs, no official position
within Iran has ultimate power and in the brief history
of the Islamic Republic there have often been clear
power struggles within the government, as is the case
today.
Most of
Iran’s political authority, in its most rudimentary
form, has conventionally been split amongst the Supreme
Leader and the Council of Experts, with the office of
the President and the Majles (Iran’s parliament) sharing
what little remains. Even today, there is no clear chain
of command, with many still debating whether it is
influential but pragmatic clerics like Rafsanjani who
have shaped government policy or if ideological
conservatives such as the current Supreme Leader control
the country’s affairs.
There
have also been several instances in the last three
decades that saw political figures from both the
clerical and the non-clerical establishments voicing
their dissent or advocating policies that were deemed
contradictory to the official position of the Islamic
Republic. These figures were subsequently purged from
the establishment, reshaped into pariahs and barred from
the institution that once empowered them. Instances of
this phenomenon can be found in the cases of once highly
influential figures such as Bani Sadr, Mohsen Sazegara,
Hussein Khomeini, and even the once anointed heir to the
office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Montazeri. The
case of Montazeri is emblematic of the power game within
Iran’s political arena. An instrumental figure in the
Iranian Revolution who helped shape the constructs of
the Islamic Republic, the elder Ayatollah was eventually
marginalized both politically and religiously for daring
to question the policies of the Islamic Republic in the
mid 1980s. Today, the once prominent cleric resides in
the Shia capital of Qom, distanced as a political leper,
virtually under house arrest and unable to even publish
religious literature.
The
recent censoring of Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani’s memoirs
is further evidence of the heterogeneous dynamic of
Iran’s bureaucracy, even in the highest echelon of the
Islamic Republic’s leadership. Arguably the most
influential cleric in terms of the economy, the
expurgation of such a prominent figure’s literary work
demonstrates the constant sway of power and influence,
revealing the vast internal contradictions and divisions
within Iranian politics (for instance, those like the
current president who follow a strict ideological
interpretation of Khomeniism, compared with pragmatists
like Rafsanjani, Khattami, and Montazeri who have
usually placed Iran’s economic and security interests
before philosophical persuasions).
The
Fifth Column
With
time, a subsidiary entity that spawned from 1979 began
to exert its power within Iran’s political arena, and
displayed a pervading influence over international,
economic, and security affairs. Within the nation, they
are known as the Sepah-e
Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami
(literally - Army of the Guardians of the Islamic
Revolution). In the West, they are commonly referred to
as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The
IRGC was formed in May of 1979 as a group of Shia
militants loyal to Khomeini and the office of the
Supreme Leader. Iran experts have correctly labeled them
as the “clerical regime's
version of a Praetorian guard”, a buffer that has
traditionally protected the establishment from hostile
internal opposition and from any threat that Iran’s
traditional military, the Artesh, may pose [1].
When
the war with Iraq began in the 1980s, the IRGC was
incorporated into the nation’s armed forces, becoming a
critical component of Iran’s defense effort against the
invading Iraqis. By the time the war ended, the IRGC had
consolidated its control of Iran’s border security and
had embedded itself into the fields of intelligence and
reconstruction efforts, securing billions of dollars in
contracts from the government.
As the Guard began to expand its operations due to its
newfound economic empowerment, a vast intelligence,
military, and internal engineering apparatus began to
form, rivaled by no other entity in the nation. In the
1990s, the Guard even took control of Iran’s black
market maze, reaping in billions per year from the sale
of any and all embargoed goods including liquor (illegal
under Iran’s Islamic law).
Now,
the nation’s most vital defense mechanisms, which
include key elements of Iran’s nuclear program and
Iran’s missile systems, are fully under the Guard’s
dominion. Earlier this year, the fiscal irresponsibility
of the clerics compelled the government to announce that
it would privatize some of its national oil companies.
Yet in Iran’s Islamic theocracy, privatization does not
have the same definition as in the West (i.e. no open
bids for contracts to either private domestic firms or
foreign entities). Most economists in the country
understood that the privatization would take place
internally, and the fact is that the only domestic
entity with the financial means to acquire these firms
is the Guard.
Today,
the Guard is an immense enigmatic labyrinth estimated to
number anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 staff
members consisting of highly-trained economists,
engineers, military strategists, chemists, lawyers,
special force reconnaissance units, and an espionage
network rivaling Israel’s Mossad, America’s CIA, or
Britain’s MI6. The Guard has its own Navy, Air and Army
Units, and a law enforcement body known as the Basij,
which is separate from the regular police and capable of
coalescing up to 11 million troops, both for domestic or
foreign operations.
This
growth pattern has remained uninterrupted; where the
political clout of the clerical establishment has been
gradually eroding due to failed economic policies
causing massive internal discontent, the financial and
political prowess of the Guard has aggrandized; it has
become a direct benefactor of both the futile domestic
policies of the government and the international
isolation that Iran has experienced. Whereas in the past
the Guard had some degree of influence on internal and
foreign policy, it has now begun dictating the agenda,
especially after 9/11. From Iraq, to Syria and Lebanon,
Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan and even overlooked Muslim
nations such as Azerbaijan and Tajikistan (which are
ethnically linked to Iran), the Guard has made
successful strides in increasing Iran’s regional role
and establishing a cogent defense mechanism.
Persia’s Rubicon
The
common perception of the Guard in the West is that of an
elite and well-funded military apparatus, loyal only to
the Supreme Leader. Yet this overly simplistic
characterization is not only outdated but also
erroneous. Certainly there are many in the Guard that
view Iran’s domestic policies and world outlook through
the lens of Khomeiniism, yet it is no homogenous
assemblage. Factionalism exists within the IRGC as well.
Iran
analyst Karim Sadjadpour has pointed out that “polls
conducted at [Guard] barracks in 1997 and 2001 found
that about three-quarters of members supported
then-President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, evidence
that the guard is actually more reflective of Iranian
society -- and its discontents”. Further, contrary to
Western notions, it was the current president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who was forced to solicit the Guard’s
support rather than being an unchallenged candidate who
supposedly represented their interests [4]. Furthermore,
many senior commanders of the Guard reportedly supported
fellow alumni Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Tehran’s current
mayor, for president in 2005. Ghalibaf, while being
undoubtedly in Iran’s conservative wing, is by no means
an ideologue like the current president, favoring a more
nuanced approach not only to Iran’s nuclear dispute with
the West but also to several aspects of Iran’s foreign
policy. Although many in the Guard are intertwined with
and still pledge verbal loyalty to the clerical
leadership, they have also taken advantage of the
establishment’s many shortcomings, “assuming large
civilian roles as Pakistani generals did before taking
power from the country's civilian leaders in the 1990s:
promising order, stability and prosperity” [5]. Today,
more than half of Iran’s Parliament consists of Guard
alumni.
The
most crucial point is the ever-increasing autonomous
nature of the Guard. Poor economic management by the
clerical leadership, constant power struggles, years of
sanctions, and a profound dependency on the IRGC as the
nation’s sole defense mechanism, has created a reality
in which the Guard has now become an affluent,
influential Goliath that has not only adopted Iran’s
regional goals of dominance, but has also become the
sole inheritor of its greater foreign policy, its
nuclear program, and the only catalyst for any possible
domestic political shift.
This
new dynamic has not gone unnoticed by the Supreme Leader
and his like-minded associates within the Guard. Where
factionalism and verbal dissent has manifested itself,
the government has attempted to further empower those
who share its ideology within the IRGC and to
marginalize those who arouse suspicions of divergence.
At this point in the history of the Islamic Republic, it
is simply improbable for the clerics to do away with the
Guard for they are the only buffer that protects them
from a disillusioned public. And yet the Guard is the
only entity able to severally marginalize the clerics,
both politically and economically, if conditions arose
where its own financial and security interests were
threatened.
Implications for Washington
Although the Guard was formed solely to defend the
ideals of the Revolution, eventually this powerful,
autonomous group may have to reconcile itself with the
malfunctions of the Islamic Republic’s system,
especially if the philosophical tendencies of the
conservative ideologues, embodied in the current Iranian
president, ultimately lead to the undermining of its own
security or economic stature. Yet, there should be no
delusional optimism with this assessment, for if the
IRGC follows the Pakistani or Turkish examples in a
quest to fully consolidate power over Iran, whether it
is achieved by a soft-takeover or an all-out coup, it
will not be motivated by any sincere effort to bring
some semblance of representative government to the
average Iranian or disabuse the spate of shortcomings
within the clerical establishment. The Guard will be
driven primarily by a desire to resuscitate a failing
system whose deteriorating policies could very well lead
to a disastrous internal collapse that from the Guard’s
perspective would bring only pernicious consequences.
Consequently, Washington should no longer adhere to a
“black and white” policy with the Iranian government,
but attempt to understand the pluralism that exists
within the clerical establishment and the Guard. The US
should realize that the IRGC has gained virtual autonomy
from the establishment and that it is solely devoted to
itself and to the Guard’s objectives for the nation,
some of which are clearly distinct from those of the
clerics. Washington should no longer entertain or engage
in the impractical funding of “opposition groups” that
operate outside of Iran or give ear to their anecdotal
suppositions on how to approach the nation. It should
stop the sanctions and truly open diplomatic channels on
the highest levels.
The
recent designation of the IRGC as a “terrorist
organization” will be another self-defeating policy that
will continue to unite an otherwise unwilling group of
disparate factions against a common threat, all of which
will help solidify the ideological conservatives' hold
on power. Too often, US policy makers defer to either
best or worst case scenarios with Iran, not following
the political trends, the shifting tides of power,
unable to understand the personas and persuasions of
each political figure, and, as a result, being
completely oblivious to the motivations behind the
actions of the Islamic Republic as a whole.
And if
the current trend continues, Washington must not only
reconcile with the power vacuum -- but also with who is
likely to fill it -- for there is no other internal
entity with the financial and military clout of the IRGC.
At present, there seems to be potential for both
progressive and militant outcomes in the aftermath of a
future Guard assertion of power over Iran, yet if
Washington were to realize the pluralistic nature of
Iranian politics and revise its Middle East policy to
meet the new realities, there is a high probability that
it would witness a much more agreeable Iranian
government. When examining the discourse and the
political thought of pragmatic Guard commanders and
their like-minded colleagues in the civilian leadership
and even in the clerical establishment, the yearning for
regional dominance by being included in the world
economy and regional affairs is undoubtedly the most
pervasive theme. This fact sits at a stark contrast from
the naive portrayal of the Iranian political
establishment by the current American administration and
their advisors as irrational figures who hold fanatic,
uncompromising global views.
It is
incumbent upon Washington to abandon its long-failed
policies of isolation, sanctions, military hostility,
and efforts at regime change for a more nuanced approach
that previously has worked with Mao Zedong’s China.
However, if constant rhetoric about “funding democratic
movements” or threats of war subsist, there can be no
other result but an Iranian version of a Pinochet-style
military dictatorship or some political apparatus
resembling the Junta of Myanmar- ultimately
perpetuating the precarious state of crisis within the
Middle East.
References
[4]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/09/27/AR2007092701657.html
[5]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/opinion/13nasr.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&oref=slogin
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