THE OBAMA administration switched to tougher tactics against Tehran yesterday, focusing on the corrupt and powerful Revolutionary Guard and seeking to drive a wedge between the elite military group and the public.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on a visit to the Middle East, warned that Iran’s democratic institutions were in danger of falling to the guard, the most powerful wing of the country’s military.
“Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship,” Ms Clinton said in Doha, Qatar. “I’m not predicting what will happen but I think the trend with this greater and greater military lock on leadership decisions should be disturbing to Iranians as well as those of us on the outside.”
Her comments mark a shift away from Barack Obama’s offer of engagement with Iran, and shows a new willingness on the part of the US administration to become involved openly in Iran’s internal politics – in contrast to last summer, when the White House was long reluctant to comment on Iran’s post-election demonstrations.
The White House aims to contrast the relative poverty of much of the population with the wealth the Revolutionary Guard has accrued. The guard, set up after the 1979 Islamic revolution, has about 125,000 fighters, owns hotels, airlines and other businesses, reports directly to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has a reputation inside Iran for thuggishness.
Ms Clinton said the US was seeking UN sanctions “that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran”.
She added: “That is how we see it. We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad], the parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. That is our view.” She told reporters flying with her: “I think the civilian leadership is either preoccupied with its internal domestic political situation or ceding ground to the Revolutionary Guard and that’s a deeply concerning development.
“It’s a far cry from the Islamic republic that had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle.”
Ms Clinton’s predecessor in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, targeted the Revolutionary Guard with US sanctions, but this is the first time that a senior member of the Obama administration has pinpointed the group.
Karim Sadjadpour, one of the leading Iran analysts in the US, based at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed that Iran was headed towards military dictatorship but disagreed with Ms Clinton’s analysis that the Revolutionary Guard was at odds with Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad. “Clinton’s comments are a reflection of the reality on the ground. I wouldn’t argue that the Revolutionary Guard are supplanting Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. However, I think the latter have actually spearheaded Iran’s transition to military dictatorship,” he said.
While sceptical about the value of previous rounds of sanctions against Iran, Mr Sadjadpour said measures designed to stigmatise the Revolutionary Guard for their human rights abuses and deprive them of their ability to sign billion-dollar deals with multinational corporations would be welcomed by many democratic activists.
The biggest problem facing US attempts to persuade the UN security council to adopt sanctions against Iran is China, which has a veto in the council and is dependent on Iranian oil. Part of Ms Clinton’s mission to the Middle East is to encourage King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to give China a guarantee that it would make up any shortfall in oil supplies.