Spoiling for a fight

According to the NY Times the United States is prepared to declare the Quds unit of Iran’s Revolutionary guards a terrorist organization.

The administration also plans to accuse the entire Revolutionary Guard Corps of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, the officials said. While the United States has long labeled Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, the decision to single out the Guard reflects increased frustration in the administration with the slow pace of diplomatic negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Both designations will put into play unilateral sanctions intended to impede the Revolutionary Guard and those who do business with it. This is the first time that the United States has taken such steps against the armed forces of any sovereign government. The action against the Revolutionary Guard, first reported by The Washington Post, would set in motion a series of automatic sanctions that would make it easier for the United States to block financial accounts and other assets controlled by the Guard. In particular, the action would freeze any assets the Guard has in the United States, although it is unlikely that the Guard maintains much in the way of assets in American banks or other institutions.

The article reports that this step became necessary because of Russian and Chinese efforts against taking diplomatic action against Iran. (Remember Israel was supposed to rely on international diplomatic efforts to rein in Syria instead of attacking its nuclear site.) More background at the Washington Post:

The overall impact, according to U.S. officials, will be to make a pariah of the most critical parts of Iran’s military and its defense and commercial industries. The Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, will be designated separately as a supporter of terrorism under Executive Order 13224, which Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding, U.S. officials said. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorism. The Quds Force — “Quds” is Arabic for Jerusalem — is estimated to number up to 15,000 and runs Tehran’s covert activities throughout the Middle East, including arms, aid and training for groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. U.S. officials say that it has provided the high-tech bombs capable of penetrating armored vehicles and the roadside explosives that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. forces in Iraq. Although Iran’s suspected weapons programs have been a longtime problem for the United States, the Quds Force’s operations in Iraq have become a bigger immediate challenge. “The Quds Force controls the policy for Iraq,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said earlier this month. “There should be no confusion about that.”

Then there’s this (via memeorandum)

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran. The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP. … So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran’s flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried. “You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”

The article goes on to question whether the United States would include an item so obvious as a threat to Iran’s nuclear program when doing so would warn Iran? I’m not sure if it’s significant if the administration loses the element of surprise. Perhaps it’s another part of the administration’s effort to put pressure on Iran to curtail its nuclear program and not an immediate threat to Iran. Taken with the Israeli raid on Syria’s – Iran’s ally – nascent nuclear program the administration might be sending a message to Iran with this spending request.

And then there’s the matter of Iran’s proxy Syria, which, according to a UN report is continuing its foreign adventures.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report Wednesday strongly suggesting that Syria has helped smuggle weapons to the Shiite movement Hezbollah and other armed groups, and that it sponsored Islamic militants involved in a military confrontation with the Lebanese army earlier this year. The report also cites Israeli assertions that Hezbollah has rebuilt its fighting capacity to a level not seen since its 2006 war with Israel. The 17-page assessment portrays Lebanon as a country facing threats to its survival not only from Syria but also from an array of armed groups linked to Islamic extremists and pro-Syria opposition parties. It says that a series of targeted killings of Lebanese lawmakers, including the September assassination of Antoine Ghanem, is gradually eroding the government’s thin majority in the Lebanese parliament. “The pattern of political assassinations in Lebanon strongly suggests a concerted effort aimed at undermining the democratic institutions of Lebanon,” according to the report, which was written by Ban’s special envoy on Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen.

(Nice of Larsen doing something useful for a change.) In the articles about the Revolutionary Guards both the Times and the Post talk about the growing tension between the two countries. For example the Times writes:

The announcement also intensifies the strained relations between the two countries.

This reduces what’s going on to a dispute. But what’s going on is more disturbing than that. Iran and its allies through a variety of means are seeking to expand their influence regionally and internationally. Their intentions are not benign. In an effort to stem that tide, the United States has tried to engage Iran diplomatically, but Russian and China have, for their own reasons, sabotaged those efforts. Now the United States is stepping up the diplomatic pressure. Will it have an effect? Will other countries come around or will they keep making excuses?

2002 is playing played out all over again. We’re told to trust the diplomatic process as a tyrant builds his strength. At what point do we have to stop looking the other way?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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I'm a government bureaucrat with delusions of literacy.
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One Response to Spoiling for a fight

  1. I suppose I’ll never understand global politics. It seems to me that if the entire world will hate you, no matter what you do, then you have the freedom to do whatever you want.

    The US and Israel spend all their time frozen in inaction, afraid that the press will complain and that the terrorists will attack. But the press are complaining and the terrorists are attacking anyway. So by all logic, there’s nothing stopping us from blowing up the people and places that so desperately need blowing up.

    Or maybe I’ve simply been living south of the Mason-Dixon line for too long. “That boy needed killin'” sounds like a better justification every day.

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