Busy news day.
Something’s cooking in the American relationship with Russia and Iran, but I can’t figure out what it is yet. Condi just put the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. The Revolutionary Guards isn’t some kind of splinter group within the Iranian regime, these guys are big-time. The Guards started out in 1979 as the new government’s elite military arm and “guardian of the revolution.”
The organization has grown in military, political and economic power since then, and the group now has its own army, navy, air force, special forces and intelligence services, parallel to and separate from the mainline Iranian chain of command. They also control the Iranian long range missile forces. Like the Chinese military, the IRGC is loaded with cash from their own sources and deeply involved in the Iranian economy through investment and ownership of companies in different industries (I guess you can call that ‘diversification’).
So by calling the IRGC terrorists, we’re hurling that anathema at a significant chunk of the Iranian power structure. It’s the first time a branch of a foreign government has been added to the State Department list. This doesn’t affect the US very much because almost no US citizens are doing any kind of business with Iran, but foreign companies could be affected if they have business deals with Iranian companies that happen to be partly owned by the IRGC. In that case, American companies would be obligated to stop doing business with those foreign companies. Indirectly, this can hurt the Iranians.
The IRGC has been accused of supporting fringe Shiite militias that have attacked American forces in Iraq. There is some evidence that the IRGC has been exporting advanced anti-vehicle devices into Iraq, such as the ‘explosively formed penetrators’ that are capable of taking out even American tanks. OK, that’s some very bad mojo.
But here is where it gets complicated - for years the IRGC has also been giving military & financial support to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). This is one of the two major Shiite groups in Iraq, and their military arm, the Badr Organization (formerly known as the ‘Badr Brigade’) is the one that has been working most closely with US forces (it would be more correct to say they are ‘less hostile’ to US forces than some other groups).
For a while there was open warfare between the Badr Brigade and the other major Iraqi Shiite group, the nominally more extremist Mahdi Army under Muqtada al Sadr. You don’t hear much about al Sadr in the US press any more, but from the accounts I’ve seen, he’s still in place and still just as powerful and dangerous as he was when he was the driving force behind the resistance in Najaf in 2004.
One further wrinkle in this mess is that al Sadr supports our biggest ally in Iraq, Prime Minister al Maliki, and in fact the Iraqi government would collapse if al Sadr pulled out. But I don’t think that makes al Sadr or the Mahdi Army any less dangerous. I think we can expect more trouble from him in the future since al Maliki’s administration is falling apart, and he may not last the year. There is no love lost between al Sadr and the US, and the US would probably like to see him liquidated or exiled. But by putting the IRGC on the terrorist list, we’re arguably putting sanctions on the funders of the enemy of our enemy. This seems like a strange decision.
So where do the Russians come in? Well, in all areas save one, Russia appears to be flexing its muscles. The country is flush with cash from its oil exports. Russia is putting increasing political pressure on its ‘near abroad,’ such as the aggressive moves towards Georgia, the political meddling in Ukraine, the cyber attacks against Estonia and the support of pro-Russian separatist movements in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Trans-Dniestr and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia just completed an undersea mission to claim sovereignty over parts of the Arctic Ocean. They announced they’re withdrawing from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (not that the CFE is very relevant any more). They’re upgrading their strategic missile forces and producing a new defensive anti-missile system. Putin is warning about a new Cold War. Russia seems to be strident in all areas except one – Iran.
As I mentioned in February on my other blog Diplomacy, Russia has stopped work on the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, which is a huge deal for Iran. And they’re being remarkably silent about American aggressive behavior against their nominal Iranian allies, and I haven’t heard any shouting from Moscow about this latest terrorist list business.
I can’t figure out what the quid pro quo is for Putin? What has Bush given up in order to keep the Russians acquiescent over Iran? Some kind of sub rosa deal is the only explanation I can think of for this behavior. But I still haven’t yet seen any significant change in US policy towards Russia that could account for it, and as the language heats up, Putin’s silence becomes even more remarkable.
Stay tuned.
Posted by case at August 16, 2007 10:49 AM