safeblad
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
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 Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:37 pm Post subject: Iran's Revolutionary Guards 'a terror group' |
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The United States is to classify Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist group in a move that will escalate tensions between Teheran and Washington.
It will be the first time that the armed forces of a sovereign government had been placed on the US terrorist list and would enable the Bush administration to move aggressively to block funding and investigate anyone conducting business with the 125,000-strong unit.
The Revolutionary Guard was formed in 1979 to protect the theocracy established after the Shah was deposed.
US officials have said it arms Shia groups in Iraq, most notably with bombs using explosively formed projectiles that have killed scores of British and American troops. Iranian weapons have also found their way into the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Its forces captured 15 British sailors and marines in March, sparking an international incident when they "confessed" to operating illegally in Iranian waters before they were released.
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sought to maximise publicity during the saga when he made a great show of handing back the servicemen, is a former revolutionary guard.
A debate within the Bush administration has focused on whether to declare the whole guard corps a terrorist group or whether to name only its Quds Force, believed to be most involved in fomenting violence in Iraq and also lending support to Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Discussions are continuing but diplomatic sources said the initial US decision was to designate the entire guard corps.
This would trigger a series of automatic measures blocking bank accounts and freezing any assets controlled by the guard in the US.
"Anyone doing business with these people will have to re-evaluate their actions immediately," an American official told the Washington Post.
"It increases the risks of people who have until now ignored the growing list of sanctions against the Iranians.
"It makes clear to everyone who the IRGC and their related businesses really are. It removes the excuses for doing business with these people."
The corps' tentacles extend into almost every aspect of Iran's economy.
In a defiant speech following the US move, Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the guard corps, declared: "Our coast-to-sea missile systems can now reach the breadth and length of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea and no warships can pass in the Persian Gulf without being in range of our coast-to-sea missiles."
The Iranian foreign ministry dismissed the move as "worthless" propaganda.
But it represents a significant hardening of attitudes within the Bush administration after a year in which the diplomatic route favoured by the British Government has been pursued via the United Nations.
But elements within the White House, most notably Vice President Dick Cheney's office, have challenged whether this policy has worked and there has been increasingly hard-line American rhetoric about Iranian interference in Iraq.
Cheney allies outside the administration have called publicly for military action against Iraq to be considered to prevent Teheran building a nuclear weapon.
They argue that uranium enrichment has proceeded apace proving that United Nations sanctions are inadequate. |
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/16/wiran116.xml |
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