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Tehran: a coup by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?
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The historical scenario playing out in Iran these days is looking more and more like 1795 France. If you remember, I cited the “whiff of grapeshot” that suppressed the royalists as a possible outcome in Iran. I also made a rather sardonic point that when the civil authority becomes dependent on the military it can be replaced by it. It would appear that my citation was on the mark.
An article in today’s New York Times suggests that power is “shifting from the clergy to the military”. In typical fashion the Times is both right and sloppy. The Times indicated a power shift to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The only problem is that the IRGC is not the military, it is a combination of secret police, bully boys, clandestine operations group and business conglomerate that exists side by side with the military.
A recent RAND paper (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG821.pdf ) clearly identifies the IRGC as to it’s place in the military, it’s political position and the full extent of it’s operations. As a military unit the IRGC has limited military capabilities included in what would be considered a special forces approach. The bulk of the IRGC’s forces are within the Basij militia, a paramilitary, semi-trained group focused primarily upon internal control. The Basij are the chain and club wielding thugs you see in the photos and it is they that maintain the regime in power along with the police forces of the Interior Ministry.
What is not generally known are the IRGC’s businesses ranging from construction to insurance. This is not unique. The militaries of Pakistan, Indonesia, and China all became substantial business entities in a successful attempt to finance their purely military activities.
Numerically the IRGC is not militarily dominant. Artesh, the formal military is over three times larger and concentrates most all of the heavy military equipment. What is just as important is that the IRGC is not the dominant organization. Both report to the General Staff. The critical question is, how insensitive is the regular military to the furor in the streets?
In France the revolutionary government turned to its’ military to save its hold on power. The end result was to place it increasingly in the power of the very agent of its’ salvation. Napoleon was simply the most talented and ambitious of a group of generals that rose out of the tumult of that time. Ahminejad is a former member of the IRGC and his administration has been marked by appointment of former IRGC members in high and middle positions in the operating government. The clerics may have saved their regime but will loose their power to the IRGC.
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