CAIRO – 11 June 2017: In the aftermath of Wednesday’s terror attack in Iran, claimed by the Islamic State group (IS), Arab intellectuals and writers have questioned whether the state’s Revolutionary Guard played any part in the attacks.
The writers argue that the ideology of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is very different from that of Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and thus the IRGC could be conspiring to undermine Rouhani’s success after his recent re-election.
Hostility between the IRGC and Rouhani
Rouhani won his second presidential term with 23 million votes against hardline rival Ebrahim Raisi’s 15.8 million on May 20. Rouhani is a reformist who deployed tremendous effort during his first term to end Iran’s international isolation and make room for further freedoms internally. One of his most important achievements is the elimination of international nuclear sanctions on Iran.
Rouhani does not adopt the conservative ideas of his predecessors. As The Guardian reported, his victory speech to the nation said, “Yesterday, you said no to those who wanted us to return to the past.”
He also crossed a red line just hours into his term, thanking reformist figurehead Mohammad Khatami as an ally and backer; security forces have banned any mention of the popular former president’s name in the media, The Guardian added.
Turnout during Iran’s elections was very high, resulting in extended voting hours until midnight, likely because a remarkable portion of the population, especially women, view Raisi and conservatives in general as a threat.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Khameneiis thought to have been backing Raisi, as he did not congratulate Rouhani on his re-election as he did after the incumbent president’s first win in 2013, although he commented positively on the high voters’ turnout, The Guardian added.
In a public speech in the northern Iranian city Mashhad three days before the election, Rouhani warned the IRGP and the Basij militia, a riot combat force affiliated with the Iranian army, from intervening in elections, Reuters reported.
“We just have one request: for the Basij and the IRGP to stay in their own place for their own work," Rouhani said in his speech. Rouhani also referred to Khamenei’s warning to the IRGP in 2009 over suspicions they falsified poll results in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In an interview with Reuters, IRGP member-turned-U.S.-based-dissident Mohsen Sazegara said, “Raisi is the Revolutionary Guards’ candidate” who is being prepared to be Khamenei’s successor. Reuters reported that Raisi belonged to the Iranian judiciary and that he has very strong ties to the Revolutionary Guards.
In a televised presidential debate in May, Rouhani accused the IRGP of trying to sabotage Iran’s nuclear deal with the west, noting the messages written on two ballistic missiles tested by the group in March 2016, just two months after the sanctions were lifted. According to The Guardian, the messages on the missiles read in Hebrew, “Israel must vanish from the page of time.”
The English version of Saudi news website Al Arabeya.net reported Rouhani’s statement regarding IRGP the as a “guarantee for stability and peace” on May 21.
Rouhani’s defense of the IRGC came in stark contrast to his earlier position on the group. Given that the group is an integral part of the Iranian state which Rouhani must deal with on a regular basis, his defense of the group despite earlier objections is understandable. What’s more, anything seen as an admission on Rouhani’s part that the IRGC in any way supported terrorism could incur penalties and sanctions against Iran, something Rouhani has worked hard to ease.
Rouhani’s statement in May came just one month after Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards General Hassan Salami said on April 22 that he would continue “supporting Islamic resistance outside borders.”
Salami’s statements came in response to a proposal to designating the IRGP as a terrorist organization. The proposal was considered by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, Reuters reported in February.
Proximity to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda
In January 2009, the U.S. Department of the Treasury
a press release titled, “Treasury Targets Al-Qaeda Operatives in Iran.” In the release, the Treasury said it had designated as terrorists four fugitives who fled Afghanistan in 2001 after the fall of Taliban and who were arrested in Tehran in 2003 by Iranian authorities.
The fact that Al-Qaeda fugitives resided in Iran for years raises the question of what, exactly, was the relationship between the terrorist group and the Shiite-majority country.
One of those on the U.S. Treasury’s list was Egyptian-Pakistani Mustafa Hamid, who was “a primary interlocutor between al Qaida and the Government of Iran,” according to the Treasury. While living in Iran, it was the IRGC that harbored the fugitive, the Treasury report added.
Another Egyptian-Pakistani dual national, Mohamed Rabea Al-Sayed Al-Bahtiti, was also on the list. The son-in-law of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Treasury said Bahtiti arranged housing on behalf of Al-Qaeda “while working from Iran” in 2003.
In a 2013 op-ed, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen
the relationship between Iran and Al-Qaeda, calling them “strange bedfellows. Bergen’s article highlighted the fact that some members of bin Laden’s inner circle, including his son-in-law, had “been living in Iran for the past decade or so.” Among them were Bahtiti and Hamid, both detained by Iranian authorities in 2003.
Bergen writes that while the bin Laden family members were essentially held under house arrest during their years in Iran, “Their conditions were not unpleasant, with time for visits to swimming pools and shopping trips.”
While Bergen argues that Iran likely saw the Al-Qaeda affiliates as potential bargaining chips to use with the U.S. – something which never came to fruition – and notes that “there doesn't seem to be evidence that Iran and al Qaeda have ever cooperated on a specific operation,” the question remains as to why Iran would have hosted them at all, much less in such comfortable conditions, it if were not in some way supporting the group.
Iran has not only been accused of having ties with Al-Qaeda, but also of ties with the Taliban. In 2016, London-based Mullah Zabihullah, the official spokesman of the Afghan Taliban and the second-in-command in the militant group, told Asharq Al-Awsat exactly that: the Taliban had ties with Iran.
“The movement is trying to benefit from all legitimate means to reach a regional agreement as part of the war against the American invasion,” Zabihullah told the London-based Saudi newspaper. ”Therefore, the Imara holds ongoing networks with a large number of regional and neighboring states.”
Revolutionary Guards and blasts in Tehran
According to one Iranian diplomat, the Iranian government has provided arms to the Islamic State group (IS). The statements of Abou Fadl Islami to Iranian newspaper Kah in London in 2015 were later reported by Al-Arabiya.
Islami, who held office in 2009 but resigned after Ahmadinijad, told Kah that Iran had “simultaneously supported” several militant groups in the region in order to destabilize other Middle Eastern countries. The groups in question held different religious tendencies and were often rivals, he said.
Iran supported IS with arms, said Islami, because the group’s presence justified Iranian intervention in Syria and Iraq under the pretext of protecting Shiite citizens. He added that Iranian diplomats used to be told that there should be no difference in supporting “Sunni, Shiite or communist” groups as long as they were “causing crises which served Iranian interests.”
In 2015, Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat interviewed Hossein Yazdan Panah, the deputy of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an oppositional Kurdish political party that spans Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan. Panah said Iran had been training IS militants on Kurdish territory and that the alleged IS attacks on its borders were an attempt by the Iranian state to appear a victim of terror.
Panah added the 10 IS associates arrested in a preemptive action in Iran were “innocent citizens” affiliated with the party which launched attacks against the IRGC camps where IS militants were trained. At the time, Iran announced it had uncovered an IS plan to target 50 locations in Iran.
Iran’s support has not been exclusive to Shiite guerilla groups like Hezbollah but has extended to include Sunni terror groups as well, which has been proved by official investigations and documents across the world.
What’s more, the rivalry between conservatives - epitomized in the IRGC - and reformists represented by Rouhani in the current and former government has been blatant. Because of this, it is not unreasonable to argue that there is a possibility the IRGC was involved in recent terror attacks inside Iranian borders.
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