The Empire of Terror Podcast

Empire of Terror Introduction Podcast One

In the early 1980s, many Western observers viewed the new government as a band of overzealous reformers who would moderate their rule once their fervor subsided. However, although the wholesale killings of the early years subsided, widespread repression continues, and the Guards remain the primary instrument of that subjugation. Today, Iranians under forty-five have little memory of Iran without the Guards.
 
The Islamic Revolution established a new social order grounded in fundamentalist Islamic family ethics and values. In present-day Iran, there is little room for political, religious, or social deviation. A woman’s life is valued at half that of a man’s, as stated in Article 209 of Iran’s Islamic criminal law. Article 1210 sets the age of majority for females at nine years. Girls can be married then. Life for gays and lesbians in Iran is often unbearable. Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Baha’i are regarded with suspicion and contempt as outsiders. Morality police patrol the streets and social haunts, on the lookout for men with long hair and women wearing short skirts and revealing clothing. Women must cover their hair and wear baggy clothing to avoid sexually stimulating men. Those who do not comply are beaten and imprisoned.
 
The penalty for adultery is stoning or one hundred lashes. In September 2018, Brian Hook, senior policy advisor to the Secretary of State and Special Representative for Iran, said, “Iran is the last revolutionary regime on Earth. It does not respect the sovereignty of its neighbors or any nation. It doesn’t recognize the citizenship of other Shias who are members of other nations in the Middle East.” Iran is a land of contrasts. Prominent mullahs and senior Guards leaders have enriched themselves by plundering the fortunes of the previous ruling class and by creating a vast system of patronage, sinecures, kickbacks, and monopolies. This is IRGC Inc.
 But many of today’s Iranians subsist in absolute poverty, while others exist on the margins of survival. Photographic images released to the world reveal the poverty of the “grave sleepers of Tehran,” the penniless and the drug addicts who sleep in cartons or under bridges or in the tombs of cemeteries. Among the more vulnerable are indigent immigrants. In 2019, Iran’s indigent and angry masses rose to challenge the regime, and the Guards responded with brutality. The anger is still palpable. But mullahs and Guards maintain their power by offering financial and social privileges.  The IRGC also projects power abroad and underwrites terrorist organizations and attacks around the world. For this reason, in April 2019, the United States designated the entire IRGC as a terrorist organization.
 
As of the writing, it still holds that status.  Who Are the Guards? The Guards’ origins, mission, orders of battle, leadership, strengths, faults, and defects are discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. It suffices here to introduce some basics. The Guards were created by the leaders of the Islamic Republic in 1979 to protect the new regime. Just as Lenin and Hitler created bodyguards for their new governments, the Ayatollah Khomeini forged a shield of guardians.
 
While the Guards began piecemeal, cobbled together from local militias, they evolved to become a great power. Many founding leaders were political outlaws during the Shah’s tenure. Others had been rusticated to Iraq or Paris or were imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison, which became a blast furnace of radical ideas in the 1960s and 1970s. Over time, the Guards grew from a military force that used both conventional and unconventional tactics to a multipurpose enterprise that controls an economic conglomerate.
 
 Today, the Guards possess political and military power and control strategic industries, commercial services, and black-market enterprises. The total defense budget for 2016–17 was approximately $9 billion. In contrast, the Guards were reportedly allocated $4.9 billion, a 67 percent increase over the previous year, to which should be added the Basij budget of $357 million.  The budget for fiscal year 2018–19 allocated the Guards' funds three times those allocated to the army.
 
Comparisons of Guards to the Soviet KGB and to the Nazi SS are a leitmotif of this book. All three were created to protect radical, expansionistic, and authoritarian states. As chapter 3 shows that the early leaders of all three services were true believers, drawn from the inner circles of Lenin, Hitler, and Khomeini. Their initial efforts focused on eliminating the remnants of the old regimes and rivals to power—the tsar’s Okhrana; the German Sturmabteilung (SA); and the shah’s Sazeman-e Ettelaat vaxx Keshvar (SAVAK). After domestic security was established, all three services built beachheads of influence abroad. All comprised military or paramilitary units. and economic domains.
 
This book argues that Iran’s regime is so intertwined with and dependent on the Guards that it is difficult to separate the two. Similarly, in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the government and the protective and intelligence services were woven from the same cloth. All three services offered (and Iran’s case continues to offer) unwavering obedience to their nation’s dictator. After 1934, German military, paramilitary, intelligence, and security officers took personal oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Many, particularly SS men and women, followed Hitler until the war’s end, despite his reckless and ultimately self-defeating strategy and his contemptuous disregard for the lives of those who served him with blind loyalty. For their part, leaders of the Soviet services proved their loyalty to Stalin. But when their assistance was no longer useful, they, too, were killed on the dictator’s orders. Iran’s Guards, like those of Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, swear allegiance to their leader. But they, too, are sometimes killed or psychologically ruined. As with the other services, the Guards pressure and sometimes harm the families of individuals they consider enemies.
 
Finally, like their historical counterparts, the Guards help deceive the world about life in Iran. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Hitler deceived the world into believing he had peaceful global intentions. In the Soviet Union, Lenin and Stalin cultivated Western sympathizers, including leading intellectuals, professors, and liberal clergymen. The Guards’ information operations churn out material to polish Iran’s tarnished image, obscuring the conditions under which political prisoners, women, gays, and dissidents live. The Guards control press outlets and satellite channels that broadcast in many languages; their active measures include subsidizing allies, establishing front companies, and funding friendly mosques.

Empire of Terror Introduction Podcast Two

The Rise of the Guards
The early years of the Guards were filled with the jingoism and martial pageantry marshalled to rally support for the war against Iraq. The piety, sacrifice, and courage of the Guards and, in particular, the Basij were celebrated throughout Iran during this conflict. The Basij were initially an independent force that drew poor, often religious, and resolute young men to fight for the revolution. Accounts of pious boys charging into battlements armed with a rifle and a Koran filled classrooms and adorned the walls of buildings in all large cities. But this image blackened in the early 1990s. The Basij were structurally merged into the Guards and repurposed to purge Western influences from Iranian society. Rough-hewn young men armed with truncheons and whips, the Basij began to brutalize their countrymen.
 
The revolution had designs on the world. Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the Guards to implement a phased global strategy to eliminate domestic enemies, expand Iranian regional influence, and, finally, achieve world supremacy.  The Guards would play prominent roles in all three phases. In the first phase, the Basij would serve as the Guards’ domestic arm, tasked with subduing and destroying domestic enemies. In the second phase, the Guards, particularly the Qods Force, would infiltrate Shia communities in neighboring states. In the third phase, the Guards would project power worldwide. From the beginning, nonconformist intellectuals in Iran faced inescapable choices. They had to either flee, support the regime, or refrain from criticizing the new system. Those with sufficient resources or contacts in the West were sometimes left to build new lives for themselves and their families.
 
Some public intellectuals rallied behind the revolution. Many kept quiet, and some actively tried to subvert an authoritarian regime they grew to loathe. Other free spirits went underground or abroad. Others, still, were swept into the social whirlwind and killed randomly by Basij. Iranians who resisted the dour clerical rule risked beatings, termination from employment, imprisonment, or death. The Guards killed some opponents of Khomeini who lived abroad. Some Iranians killed themselves.
 
Homa Darabi, a prominent American-trained woman physician, protested the treatment of girls and women by setting herself on fire in 1994 while shouting, “Death to Tyranny! Long live freedom! Long live Iran!” Other protesters were killed in the streets or in special cells in prisons. Others disappeared. The Guards and the MOIS deployed packs of assassins abroad to
kill those deemed hostile to the revolution. As the IRGC tried to eliminate its perceived enemies at home and abroad by imprisoning or killing them, it also inculcated new generations of Iranians with ideological fervor. Iranian leaders are determined to develop indoctrinated and religiously committed leaders to pass the revolutionary spirit on to future generations. As children move from primary through secondary to higher education, they are trained and monitored by the Guards. After they leave school or university, those students who participated in Basij after-school activities and organizations are offered preferred employment opportunities. As in the Soviet Union, those who have proved the most loyal are offered fast-track positions in the government and intelligence services. These posts often serve as springboards for commercial opportunities, as the Guards control many firms.
 
Many Iranians want nothing to do with any element of the Guards and try to avoid them. Some resist passively by refusing to identify political dissidents; flouting laws enforced by the Basij, particularly those governing social behavior; listening to and watching foreign broadcasts; pretending not to hear the Basij when they shout commands in the street, or giving them dagger looks; and avoiding religious centers. Some Iranians engage in active resistance, such as marching in street demonstrations, encouraging opposition on social media, proffering unorthodox religious views, and, at times, physically attacking Iranian officials. When they are caught, they are harassed, beaten, or carted off to prison.
Iran’s foreign policy is implemented, in part, by the Guards. Ruling mullahs call Iran the epicenter of the Muslim world and feel morally compelled to spread revolutionary Shia Islam globally. The Guards Qods Force is Iran’s direct mechanism to project Iranian power in the Greater Middle East and elsewhere. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has supported Shia militias abroad. By 2018, Iran controlled or heavily influenced four capitals of Middle Eastern states—Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and Sanaa.
 
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has described the twenty-first-century situation in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria as signs that God favors Iran and that “God will assist you (Iranians) with victory.” The Guards control divisions of foreign fighters, much as the Soviets commanded international brigades during the Spanish Civil War and the Nazis commanded SS divisions during World War II, some of which were composed of foreign fighters and others of purely German personnel.
 
The Guards control a vast economic empire. Guards Inc. is slang for the Guards-controlled charities, or bonyads, as well as docks, banking, and construction enterprises. This has suppressed entrepreneurial spirit and impeded sustained, broad-based economic growth. Today, Iran is beset by economic predicaments and social divisions. Like leaders in the Soviet Union, the Guards control much of Iran’s environmental and financial services, directly owning most of the country’s natural wealth, particularly fossil fuels. The Guards also control banking, creating vast inefficiencies. The IRGC holds a near-monopoly over financial control in many sectors.
As in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the intelligence and security services oversee the development of Iranians from the cradle. The Basij molds children to remain devoted to the ideals of the revolution. As grade schoolers become middle schoolers, the girls are guided toward domesticity and the boys toward martial and religious pursuits. As they grow older, the better prospects are selected for university places and then for the Guards themselves. Following graduation, they are awarded preferential jobs. There is also a career path for laborers in the Guards and the Basij.
 
 

Empire of Terror Introduction Podcast Three

 
The Father of All Bombs
 
Iran has become a primary threat to American interests in the greater Middle East. If armed with a nuclear arsenal, it could threaten America itself. For nearly forty years, the Guards and the MOIS have sponsored and commanded anti-Western terrorist organizations. Indeed, the Guards’ reach has expanded into the heart of the Middle East and into South America. Iran’s enemies list includes the United States and Israel, both of which Tehran threatens to annihilate. Rhetoric aside, until recently, Iran did not pose an existential threat to any Western country. But in the last decade, Iran has built a menacing arsenal of missiles and warheads that imperil cities and civilizations, sparking debate in Western capitals about how to confront Iran’s aspiring, but not yet proven, nuclear weapons capability.
 
In addition to the missile threat, the Guards have an elite conventional army, navy, and air force, just as the German SS and the Soviet NKVD/KGB did in World War II. In the last two years of the war, the SS order of battle totaled nearly one million men. NKVD soldiers fought alongside Red Army troops and were sometimes deployed as independent units. Similarly, the Guards have independent services that, like the SS and the NKVD, are more prestigious and better supplied.
 
Some observers compare elements of contemporary Iran to those of the early Third Reich. Michael Oren, an Israeli statesman, has noted that in the 1930s, Western states were drained and nearly insolvent. Only belatedly did they confront the growing menace posed by Germany and Italy, both of which aspired to regional and global domination. Like the Nazis, Iranian leaders have built their military capabilities to advance their policy ambitions. The Guards are the primary means of achieving these goals. The scope of their power continues to grow. When Iranian-sponsored and Guards-supplied
Houthi rebels captured the Yemeni capital in September 2014. An Iranian parliamentarian boasted that it was “the fourth Arab capital on its way to following the Iranian Revolution.” Some American observers believe Iran is already at war with the United States. Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the 1995 World Trade Center attackers, said, “If we are not going to win, we are going to lose.” Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, former commander of the Guards, has bragged that the Iranian juggernaut is prepared to meet any military challenge the United States might present. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, another Guards general, claims the Islamic Republic has developed the “father of all bombs,” a ten-ton bomb with the blast power of America’s “mother of all bombs.” The head of Iran’s navy, Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi, has promised to “fly the Iranian flag in the Gulf of Mexico.”
 
As of this writing, leaders of the Guards are concerned that social unrest and restlessness in Iran could escalate into near-rebellion. The economy could tip into free fall. Ten years ago, the Guards were deployed to quell unrest that had devolved into open riots. In terms of domestic challenges, 2020 may be the most significant year of threats to the regime since 2009. In early 2018, crowds chanted in Persian, rhyming “Reza Shah, bless you.” Reza Shah was the shah of Iran from 1925 to 1941 and the father of Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, the shah who was overthrown in 1979, as discussed in chapter 1. Other rhymes included “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, my soul for Iran.” The protests in Iran escalated in 2019. Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli claimed that by fall 2019, as many as 200,000 people had participated in demonstrations that year. Today, Iranians take to the streets in support of and in protest against the ruling government and the Guards who support it.
 
Trump vs. Iran
 
During his first term as president, Donald Trump despised Hassan Rouhani, who, in turn, despised him. They despised the political system that the other leads. President Trump has called Iran’s government a “corrupt dictatorship” that “exports violence, bloodshed, and tears” and called upon the world to isolate Iran. In his judgment, those who suffer the greatest are the Iranian people, who are denied a comfortable standard of living because the country’s oil Revenue funds are given to international terrorist groups: “They’re a nation of terror. . . . I’m not looking to hurt that country, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon; it’s very simple.” In 2020, President Trump put muscle behind his words when he ordered the assassination of the charismatic leader of the Qods Forces. The Pentagon explained that Major General Soleimani orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq in late 2019 and added that the killing was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”
 
The president, then, threatened to hit fifty-two Iranian sites if the country retaliated. In turn, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission promised that “we will hit a number of U.S. targets that will be as many as the number of the verses (6,236) of the Holy Quran, and we will target 124,000 of them that stands equal to the number of 124,000 prophets.” All this has panicked some young American men. The United States Selective Service website crashed the day after the strike amid fears that young men would be drafted for a war against Iran. As of this writing, there is no ongoing armed conflict with the Islamic Republic. But hostilities loom, and the Guards are active around the world. This is the subject of future readings of Empire of Terror.