Iranian Revolutionary Guards: Terrorists in Disguise
The Washington Post reports that the ‘United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,†according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.’
The reason? Iran’s constant and increased meddling in Iraq, Afghanistan and, well, the entire the Middle East for that matter. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is helping out terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah: with training, knowledge, and equipment. Seemingly, the US has had enough and has, therefore, decided to label the private militant group of the Mullahs terrorists.
The goal is to starve the Republican Guard: by labeling it a terrorist organization the US hopes to stop it from being financed. The question is, however, whether one can label a legitimate army a ‘terrorist organization.’ Please click here to read more at my own blog, and here to read Joe’s analysis.
5 Responses to “Iranian Revolutionary Guards: Terrorists in Disguise”
Just another beat on the drums of war. From what I can tell, this administration doesn’t want to leave office until they’ve destabilized every country in the Middle East.
I also wonder how this description doesn’t fit the United States: “growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East”
We can’t claim that Iran has no right to interfere in Iraq or Afghanistan unless we also recognize we have no right to be there. To say otherwise would be to embrace true moral relativism.
While I can understand the pursuit of expanded exonomic pressure on Iran, doing it by use of the ‘terr;orist’ label seems highly problematic. It sounds too much like expanding the ‘Axis of Evil’ umbrella to include subgroups. The Revolutionary Guard is an arm of their governement, just like our armed forces are, like it or not By extension, can we then target their Dept. of Education, as well?
A lot of countries are ‘meddling’ in other countries, so that argument is on shaky ground, too. We shouldn’t raise areguments that can be turned right around to be pointed at ourselves.
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I see Bush and Co. using this as way to zig-zag around Congress when they decide to start unilateral military action against Iran. SInce there is already authorization to engage in our War of Terror, they will be putting the political arm twist on legislators to prove that Iran “isn’t” worthy of bombing. Meanwhile every significant nation in the world is “meddling” in Iraq to protect their national interests. Support of moderate government reforms in Iran is the best long term strategy, but essentially calling their military terrorists is a surefire way to alienate even the pro-western factions in the country.
US diplomacy is suffering from a precarious split personality; backing all the players wth arms and money, hedging their bets for whoever comes out on top, yet in the end the whole world loses.
The United States has interfered in other countries’ affairs for more than 100 years. Think the Spanish American war in which we took the Phillipines as a colony and Puerto Rico as well. How about Honduras and Nicaragua as well. The US has been very, very busy in the interference business.
The US supports the MEK to interfere in Iran and the Iranian and Syrian Kurds to interfere in those countries. Our contentions of who is a terrorist and who is not has no objective criteria. In South America, we supported any number of right wing death squads to further our objectives.
We should drop the name terrorists and just say we are using our military and economic clout to do what we want and further our objectives. When we do it, G-d is on our side, when others do it, Satan is at work.