Why IRGC is enemy of Islam and a major source of terrorism

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) (File photo)

 - In 1979, after decades of oppression, people in Iran courageously stood up to the Shah dictatorship and demonstrated power of the people by toppling him. But their hopes of freedom were soon crushed when Khomeini was able to deceive them with false promises to establish a bloody reign of terror, based on a state principle called velayat-e-faqih.

We must not be deceived by media outlets, which try to compare Iran’s state principle to other countries in the region. Velayat-e-faqih means that the faqih, a so-called Islamic jurist, is the custodian of all Muslims until the missing 12th Imam Mahdi reappears. By nature, he must rule not only people in Iran but Muslims all over the world and has the divine duty to give global fatwas and intervene into other nations to “free” them.

This is manifested in the preamble of the Iranian constitution of 1979 when it says: “[T]he Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) […] will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world”.

We can see here that one main goal of IRGC is the export of “revolution” into other countries. There can never be peace as long as the whole world has been taken over by Iran’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Therefore, we see that the IRGC is meddling in different countries in the region. No other country has a similar state form as Iran with the exception of ISIS.

By nature these two ideologies are similar with the difference that Iran claims to be “Shiite” while ISIS claiming to be “Sunni”. The Saudi Crown Prince therefore has every reason to say that dialogue with such a regime is impossible.

These interpretations counter the main principles of Islam which means submission and roots in the very Arabic word peace. When we take a look at the biography of Prophet Mohammad, he was always aiming to achieve peace treaties even if disadvantaging Muslims. It’s worth mentioning that Allah sent him an Ayah for victory (Quran 48:1) not after the winning of a fight but after making a peace treaty in Hudaibiyyah. These very principles are also found in the Quran which particularly aims to make people humble and loving.

Use of force

Similarly, also according to “Shiite” interpretations of Islam, Imam Ali called for the use of force only in situations of defense and only unless a necessity exists, forbidding even further violence when the enemy is injured and defenseless and from attacking innocent bystanders. This is manifested in important Shia sources such as Nahj al-Balagha.

Most “Shiite” scholars therefore reject Khomeini’s ideology and his state principle. We can therefore clearly see that the manifestation of the IRGC’s exportation of the ‘revolution’ through violence counters the very teachings of Islam. It is because of the exportation of terror through groups such as the IRGC, al-Qaeda and ISIS that many people have a wrong perception of Islam today.

These groups are therefore enemies of Islam. They misuse the banner of religion to teach anti-religious doctrines. According to the famous cleric Ayatollah Taleghani this is the most dangerous ideology possible, because here fundamentalism is justified through higher powers.

In recent years we have unfortunately seen numerous attempts to appease the Iranian regime. The Obama administration, for economic and geopolitical reasons, followed a policy of appeasement with Iran and gave them billions of dollars that were used for sectarian policies, terror and the export of its “revolution”. Even former US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in an interview that Iran will use money from sanction relief for terrorism.

Qatar also helps Iran when it stroke deals and held meetings with notorious IRGC Commander Qassem Suleimani as recently in Baghdad and by spreading a pro-Iranian narrative on Al Jazeera. Therefore among other reasons Qatar is rightfully targeted by its Gulf neighbors for its involvement in global terrorism.

Economy and IRGC

Moreover according to sources from the Iranian opposition, at least 40 percent of the economy is in the hands of the IRGC. Thence many economic deals with Iran will in the end have no other result than the strengthening of the IRGC and the export of terrorism. Iran’s involvement in terror, assassinations and cooperation with terror groups such as Al Qaeda is well documented and was even mentioned by US President Donald Trump.

These failed policies of appeasement have endangered the Middle East and were a main cause for the birth of so-called ISIS. When Iran’s sectarian forces started to massacre the ‘Sunni’ community in Iraq and Syria with help from their governments, many ‘Sunnis’ by nature became more extreme and wanted to retaliate.

According to former US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey, the positions and policies adopted by former Iraqi PM Maliki against Iraq’s Sunni community paved the path for the rise and growth of ISIS. Moreover, in a Fox News interview in November 2014, John Kerry acknowledged how Assad facilitated the release of 1,500 extremist prisoners which parallel to the release of 1,000 prisoners by Maliki in Iraq led to the foundation of ISIS.

To stop fundamentalism and sectarianism in the region, it is important to target the ultimate cause of instability. That can only happen when the international community places the IRGC on its terror lists and starts to confront it.

Western governments must no longer listen to corporations and lobbyists who try to benefit from instability but must help the rising people in Iran to topple the anti-religious regime. This will be a huge step to replace the darkness of terror that has taken hostage the people of the Middle East with the bright light of a new dawn of peace, the ultimate aim of Islam.

Is Iran Baiting The U.S. Into Deeper Syrian Quicksand?

will the Trump Administration maintain a laser focus to turn the keys over to Arab stabilization force to prevent the return of ISIS after Raqqa falls, or will it take Iran’s bait and slide deeper into the Syrian quagmir?

HUFFPOST, June, 28,2017-- With new U.S. intelligence suggesting Syria’s Assad may be preparing to launch another chemical weapons attack on his beleaguered people, the White House preemptively warned Assad “would pay a heavy price” if an attack was launched.
Assad’s April 2017 sarin gas attack resulted in dozens of innocent civilian deaths. Recall that in response, the Trump Administration served up a retaliatory strike of 59 Tomahawk missiles against the Syrian airbase from which the chemical weapons attack was launched. On its face, Assad may not have learned a lesson, but there is far more below the desert sands than meets the eye regarding Iran’s and Assad’s goal of booting American boots out of Syria. In those baked and bloodied Syrian sands the U.S. is playing checkers against Russia while Iran is playing for keeps while setting a deadly trap for us.

As serious as a military confrontation between Russian and American forces in Syria, it is a diversion insofar as the future of Syria is concerned. Moscow warned Washington following President Trump’s April retaliation that it would “stop” any further U.S. attacks against Assad’s military. The skies over Syria are as crowded as a Beltway traffic jam – ripe for an unintended or intentional incident between Russian and American war planes. Just last week, U.S. fighters shot down a Syrian warplane that had attacked American-supported Syrian Kurdish fighters advancing on ISIS’s stronghold at Raqqa. Soon thereafter, two Iranian-made drones probing American defenses south of Raqqa near the al-Tanf military base were destroyed by an American F-15.

Putin warned Washington that Russian anti-aircraft missiles would fire on any American aircraft flying west of the Euphrates River – Russia’s version of a “no-fly” zone. It is a dicey roll of the dice whether Putin would risk a duel with the American air force over the skies of Syria. But given his doubling down for Assad, Putin can ill afford to turn Syrian airspace over to the U.S. He would rather prove his point than walk back from his own red line.
Washington now confronts another “Kodak” moment in Syria: will the Trump Administration maintain a laser focus to turn the keys over to a Sunni Arab stabilization force to prevent the return of ISIS after Raqqa falls, or will it take Iran’s bait and slide deeper into the Syrian quagmire on Tehran’s terms?
To understand exactly what a slippery slope we are on it would be helpful to have a map of Syria in front of you. It is hard enough for a professional military officer to understand the Syrian battlefield, let alone arm-chair generals (of which I am not).
Near the triangular intersection of the Iraqi-Syrian-Jordanian border sits al-Tanf ― a former Syrian military base now the major headquarters for U.S. military advisers and other anti-ISIS coalition forces, including Maghawir al-Thawra (MAT―Revolutionary Commando Army). MAT are the “good guys” and was founded in May 2015 to battle ISIS incursions into Jordan. Along with their American advisers, MAT recruits are the “southern cousins” of their northern Kurdish American allies advancing in a pincer movement along a north-south axis to encircle Raqqa and cut off fleeing ISIS fighters.
However, Raqqa, and its fall, is a side show to Tehran.
What matters to Iran and Assad is the American base at al-Tanf and the Syrian province surrounding it. Because al-Tanf abuts the old Damascus-Baghdad highway – and is on the geographical nexus of a “Shiite Crescent” land corridor designed to link Tehran with Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus, the Iranians are determined to boot the Americans out. Worse for Iranian strategic aims, the Americans at al-Tanf are about to be reinforced by the first elements of a new Sunni Arab counterterrorism force being deployed to hold and stabilize eastern Syria after Raqqa falls. To put it in historical terms, the American base at al-Tanf is a veritable “Bastogne” standing in the way of that ayatollah aspiration.
The formation and eventual deployment of this combined American/Sunni Arab counterterrorism force is one of the very successful outcomes of President Trump’s U.S. – Arab Summit in Riyadh last month – an essential bulwark to destroy the remnants of ISIS and prevent it from regaining toeholds in the notoriously ungovernable eastern Syrian and western Iraqi deserts. The sooner that expeditionary force is deployed, the better and safer it will be for Americans stationed in Syria.
Iran plans to prevent a linkup of coalition forces along that north-south axis slicing across Syria through Raqqa by deploying an Iranian-backed Shiite militia force to divide American forces in two between those stationed at al-Tanf, and those supporting Syrian YPG Kurdish forces based in northern Syria abutting the Turkish frontier. Iranian-backed Shiite militias advancing from western Iraq (which did not participate in the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS) are moving slowly west as Syrian forces move east to secure this complex route that weaves its way across Arab Iraq into Syrian Kurdish lands into devastated Aleppo.
The ultimate prize sought by the Iranians: the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, where most of Syria’s oil resources are located and a land corridor to enable Iran to resupply and embolden its terrorist proxies, notably Hezbollah, without having to rely on an air route into Damascus.
Iran would never risk a head-on confrontation with American-backed forces. Instead, Tehran is hoping to divert American attention (and forces) away from the al-Tanf triangle to far south-western Syria where its terrorist proxies ― Iran-backed Shiite militias and Hezbollah forces ― are probing Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights as a feint. Once Raqqa falls, Iran is planning to enable the deployment of fresh troops from Assad’s Syrian army to secure the strategic lands of eastern Syria hitherto under ISIS control and lay the groundwork for a terrorist attack against American forces in eastern Syria, the rationale being that the American public has no appetite for another 1983-style Beirut Marine barracks attack ― perpetrated by an obscure terrorist group called Islamic Jihad, which was nothing but a cover for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard cell.
All of this is to say that no matter what Putin’s long-term objectives may be in Syria (maintaining a friendly Shiite regime in power and his western Syrian military bases secured), Iran has more complex anti-American strategic objectives in Syria – centered on securing the Euphrates river valley by punishing the Americans out of Syria through bloody terrorist attacks not readily traceable to Iran.
American acquiescence in Tehran’s strategic goals in eastern and central Syria (as well as in the eastern Golan Heights region abutting Israel) will define – for better or for worse – the Trump Administration’s near-term Syrian strategy – no matter what happens to Assad.
Iran’s barely-concealed imperialist ambitions across the Middle East (instigating proxy wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Libya) are a major threat to Israel, as well. The eastern, Assad regime-controlled portion of the Heights has been the scene of escalating Israeli military strikes against Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces which sniff an opportunity to carve out a “zone of control” opposite Israeli forces.
Israel has warned it will not tolerate a new Hezbollah “eastern front.” That may be academic. Hezbollah now possesses enough missiles (100,000 according to open source intel) to represent an existential threat to Israel, and the more Iran wins in Syria, the more likely Hezbollah will be at war with Israel.
The great failure of the Obama Administration’s Iran policy was naively hypnotizing itself into believing that the Iran nuclear agreement would incubate a more moderate Iranian regional policy. That double-down is proving to be a sucker’s bet – as many analysts warned. Uber liberal Democratic foreign policy wonks, notably ineffectual wonk-in-chief John Kerry, are still whistling past the Middle East graveyard hoping against hope that Iran can be charmed into acting more responsibly. They remain mesmerized by their Iran nuclear agreement handiwork at the expense of acknowledging more must be done to contain Iran’s emboldened agenda.
The “new” Iran is the same old Iran, only worse.
The most effective counterweight against Iran is to turn the tables on the Ayatollah’s regime. A rapid deployment of Sunni Arab forces to stabilize eastern Syria and western Iraq is the best defense against this Iranian offense. That must be Job #1 for the Trump Administration… no ifs, ands or buts. It is one thing for Iran to plot a terror attack against an American base (Afghanistan is a reminder how easy that can be), it is another for Iranian Shiite militias to take on Sunni Arab forces fighting ISIS with American support.
The unfolding dire position the U.S. faces in Syria is one more strike against President Obama who foolishly took Iran regime change off the table – even when the hated Ahmadinejad was still in power. That pill is still hard to swallow.
The Trump Administration should not put it in neon lights, but setting a course to provide more support for internal dissent in Iran is the Achilles heel of the regime. It’s time to force the regime to mind the store, instead of mining our forces. This means working with domestic and international Iranian opposition groups (including the National Council of Resistance of Iran), without having to publicly affirm that deposing the terrorist-led regime is U.S.-declared policy. Discrediting the regime in the eyes of the Iranian public is essential.
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, his likely successor, and his Revolutionary Guards constitute a major strategic threat to world stability and to American security. Almost two years after the nuclear agreement, Iran remains the principal state sponsor of terror in the world.
We need to be as good at Syrian chess, or better, than the Iranians. But Tehran has a strategy, and, at least for now, the U.S. doesn’t. Syria’s fate is not nor should it be in our hands. Its killing fields should be an American “no boots zone” to the maximum extent possible. An effective American policy cannot be premised on those like Mr. Kerry and his “Diplomacy Works” amen choir of Iranian apologists who wring their hands fearing that provoking Iran could destroy their nuclear agreement handiwork.
Cold realism about Iran’s goals must trump those who place their heads in the sand hoping it is we who will see the light.