Invitation to war

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates during the summit at Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, on July 31.-BEN CURTIS/AP

The U.S. proposes to label Irans Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation.

IN the third week of August, senior officials in the George W. Bush administration told the United States media that they are on the verge of declaring the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite and largest branch of Irans military, a specifically designated global terrorist under Executive Order 13224. This would be the first time that an army of a sovereign country is being put on the so-called terrorist list by a U.S. administration. According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Bush administration is taking this step because of the destabilising activities of the IRGC in Iraq and Afghanistan. This move is also part of the orchestra ted attempts by Washington in recent years to ratchet up the tension with Teheran.

The 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards is the main branch of the Iranian army. It has its own air force, navy, ground forces and special units. Its naval forces were recently involved in the arrest of 15 British sailors who had crossed into Iranian territorial waters. Some commentators say that if the U.S. State Department actually goes ahead with its threat, it would virtually amount to a declaration of war against Iran.

The U.S. State Department spokesman had said that his government is confronting Iranian behaviour across a variety of different fronts on a number of different battlefields. The international diplomatic community was alarmed by the officials use of the word battlefield.

Iran has been long classified as a state sponsor of terrorism by Washington. The country was clubbed among the axis of evil powers by President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

The latest move is also aimed at further tightening the financial screws on Iran. The Iranian Army, like its counterparts in countries such as China and Cuba is allowed to run its own businesses. The IRGC has a big financial stake in Teherans underground rail system. The impressive Khomeini International Airport in Teheran was built by it. It also has a big stake in the countrys crucial hydro-carbon sector.

Washington will now put even more pressure on countries such as Japan, South Korea and Italy, which have invested heavily in the oil and gas sector in Iran, to apply sanctions. Under the onerous provisions of the Hyde Act, India will also have to fall in line with American diktats in case the 123 Agreement is made operational.

Senior U.S. officials have been visiting important capitals to get the tough message on Iran across. The U.S. Treasury Under Secretary, Stuart Levey, who looks after the economic counter-terrorism unit, has been in Europe trying to persuade governments and businesses to cut off links with Teheran. Nicholas Burns, the Under Secretary of State, has told the U.S. Senate that Washington has used its influence to convince leading European banks to stop all credits to Iran. He has also said that European governments as well as Japan are being persuaded to begin reducing their export credits to Iran.

There is considerable speculation that these new steps are a prelude to an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. It is an open secret in Washington that the neoconservatives led by Vice- President Dick Cheney have been arguing for a military confrontation with Iran. The State Department, led by Condoleezza Rice, is no doubt aware of the limitations of U.S. power and has been arguing for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Iran. Rice may have decided to add the terrorist tag to the Iranian Army as a sop to the hawks in the Bush administration. She also evidently hopes that the tougher posture will prod the United Nations Security Council to implement draconian sanctions on Iran.

A senior Iranian cleric, Ahmad Khatami, said that the U.S. plans to designate the Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist group was an invitation to war. Khatami, who belongs to the influential Assembly of Experts, warned the U.S. administration that they would be entering a swamp they wont be able to get out of.

The IRGC was formed immediately after the victory of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Iranian Army was not considered entirely trustworthy at the time as its officer corps had owed their allegiance to the deposed Shah. The Revolutionary Guards, known locally as the Pasdaran, had played a heroic role in the eight-year-war with Iraq, which followed almost immediately after the 1979 revolution.

Reacting to the message from Washington, the IRGC Commander Yahaya Rahim Safayi reminded the U.S. government that Iranian missiles are capable of targeting American warships anywhere in the Gulf. An IRGC spokesman described the American move as worthless resolutions issued under baseless pretexts.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the move was part of an ongoing psychological and propaganda war. ABC News reported that President Bush has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert actions to destabilise Iran. These include encouraging the Kurd, Baluch, Arab and other minorities to revolt against the Iranian government.

In recent months, the Bush administration has been increasingly putting the blame for its military reverses in Iraq and Afghanistan on the IRGC. Bush has alleged that the Iranian Army is helping the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said in early August that the American people should be concerned about Irans activities in Iraq and around the world.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki as well as Afghan President Hamid Karzai have stated that Iran is playing a positive role in the region. It is well known that the main Shia parties that are ruling in Baghdad have close relations with Teheran. As for Afghanistan, Iran was on the verge of waging a war with the Taliban-led government in the late 1990s.

Americas close allies have voiced their disquiet over the latest developments. Officials from European and West Asian states have said that the new steps envisaged by the Bush administration would only raise tensions in the region further and undermine the diplomatic efforts currently on. They feel that designating one of the pillars of the Iranian Revolution as a terrorist organisation would only increase the chances of war.

The New York Times has described the move of the lame-duck Bush administration on Iran as amateurish.

Dennis Kucinich, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration who is among the Democratic Partys candidates aspiring for the presidency, said the move is nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into another war this time with Iran. The Congressman said that the belligerent Bush administration is using this pending designation into convincing the American public into accepting that a war with Iran is inevitable.

The European Union (E.U.) has said that it has no plans of designating the IRGC a terrorist outfit. The European Commission spokesman said that the E.U. takes such decisions only after a resolution is passed in the U.N.

In early August, Condoleezza Rice and the Defence Secretary Robert Gates were in the West Asian region. They used the trip to announce that the U.S. government was giving arms packages worth $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and $30 billion to Israel. (India was given a nuclear deal and the role of a key strategic partner by Washington in July.) They made it clear that the arms were meant to combat Iran. Nicholas Burns, who played a key role in sewing up the nuclear deal with India, said in Tel Aviv that the arms aid for Israel was meant to counter an axis of cooperation between Iran, Syria, Hizbollah, Islamic Jehad and Hamas that is responsible for violence in the region. The Saudis are reluctant to acknowledge openly an Iranian connection to the proposed arms deal but the Bush administration has made it clear that it considers Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria, impediments to its grand designs in the region.

If the U.S. carries out its threat against the IRGC, even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be arrested if he ever steps into American territory. He was a commander in the IRGC during the war with Iraq. Many other senior Iranian officials have at one time or the other served with the IRGC. Mohamed Jafari, with whom Rice held talks recently at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit on Iraq, is still a member of the IRGC. U.S. officials had said that the talks were held in a cordial and warm atmosphere.

It is well known that the IRGC lent a helping hand to the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of September 11. Its help was crucial to initial U.S. military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The IRGC is also known to have played a role in the Bosnian independence struggle in which the Muslim population was fighting against the rampaging Croats and Serbs. Bosnian Muslims were staunch allies of the West. Iran along with other Muslim countries had supplied them with arms and trained their fighters. Many Iranians had fought alongside the Bosnian Muslim forces. Not to forget the infamous Iran-Contragate scandal of the 1980s, which involved intelligence agencies from both Iran and the U.S.

Trita Parsi, a distinguished U.S.-based expert on Iran, has said that the latest move of the Bush administration could deal a double blow to efforts to utilise diplomacy with Iran to stabilise Iraq. She added that the move could negatively impact on the next U.S. Presidents ability to seek diplomacy with Iran by further entrenching U.S.-Iran relations in a paradigm of enmity. Iran can challenge the U.S. move on the basis of international law. Under the terms of the 1981 Algiers Accord, the U.S. had pledged non-interference in the internal affairs of Iran. The accord was brokered by Algeria and led to the release of American citizens who were held in Iran.