Iran v. Britain: Who Blinked?

While commentators have charged that Britain capitulated to Iran and handed them a humiliating victory in obtaining the release of the 15 British Marines last week, it would appear that something more like the opposite is actually the case. But to understand why this is so, we have to look at the larger picture of internal Iranian politics against which the crisis played out.

Our Iranian problem is actually a problem with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, or in Persian Pasdaran) and allied institutions like the Basij militia. These are the “power” agencies that serve as the political base for the conservatives inside Iran. In return for its support, political leaders like ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have allowed the IRGC to grow into a semi-autonomous state-within-a-state. Today it is a large and sprawling enterprise, that controls its own intelligence agency, manufacturing base, and import-export companies, much like the Russian FSB or the Chinese military. Since coming to power, the current Ahmedinejad regime has awarded IRGC-affiliated companies billions in no-bid contracts, increasing the already great perception among the Iranian public of its corruption.

It is widely believed that Supreme Leader Khamenei put the current nutcase president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad into office as a means of counterbalancing former president Rafsanjani, and has been regretting this decision ever since as Ahmedinejad spouted off about the Holocaust and pushed Iran deeper and deeper into isolation. The current president comes out of the IRGC (specifically, the Ramazan Unit of the Quds Force), and has used that organization and the Basij to help consolidate his power by moving against more liberal political opponents.