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Are We Prematurely Designating IRGC as Criminal-Soldiers?
The recent U.S. consideration to designate the 125,000 person strong Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a specially designated global terrorist (per Executive Order 13224) has quite a few international security implications. (1) On the most basic level, it highlights growing U.S. and Iranian tensions over Irans nuclear weapons program and Iranian involvementvia its Quds Force belonging to the Revolutionary Guardin both fermenting and supporting terrorist and insurgent activities in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.What may be far more significant, however, is the U.S. designating the military branch of a sovereign state as a terrorist organization. In the past, such designations have applied only to non-state entities. (2) While the intent of such a designation would be to target the Revolutionary Guards multi-billion dollar business network with ties to over 100 companies, (3) broader implications concerning state sovereignty, political legitimacy, and, ultimately, non-state-on-state conflict readily emerge. The issue with such a well-warranted designation, however, are the implications for political legitimacy it then extends to Irans Revolutionary Guard and, ultimately, to the Islamic Republic of Iran itself. If the Revolutionary Guard is labeled a 125,000 person force of criminal-soldiers then would it not follow that the sovereign state that fielded it would also be considered criminal? State sovereignty and legitimacy issues will thus become more and more important as time goes on because warfare is shifting from state-on-state to non-state-on-state conflict. In this new form of conflict, war is increasingly being fought over humanitys future social and political organization and not over more traditional notions of the extension and preservation of national sovereignty. While the Islamic Republic of Iran might appear to be a state at first blush, in actuality, it is representative of a Shia apocalyptic non-state group that has taken over the vestiges of state trappingsthe Ayatollahs ruling under Mahdi mandate kept in power by their religious enforcers. The critical question stemming from this observation is should the U.S. currently designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization and, as a result, give a de facto challenge to the political legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Or do we bide our time, considering the already extended nature of our resources, before preparing to engage in direct global conflict with another non-state entity and its terrorist and insurgent allies. Since the U.S. is already in a global war with radical Sunni entities (e.g. the Al Qaeda network)do we really want to go hot and openly enter into a new global shooting war with radical Shia entities (e.g. the Ayatollahs, Hizballah, et. al.)? Prudence would suggest otherwise. In a war over humanitys future social and political organization, the U.S along with other Western Democracies and their allies cannot allow either an imamate or a caliphate to be established in the Islamic world. Consequently, it is recognized that the issue is not if we should openly move against the criminal-state known as the Islamic Republic of Iran but when. Nevertheless, the importance of success in this endeavor is such that we cannot approach it without the means to fully follow through. A possible compromise at present would be to only designate the Quds Force as terrorists per Executive Order 13224 at present while continuing to covertly exert pressure on Iran and the IRG behind the scenes. Posted by: Pappy 2007-09-09 |
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