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At a moment when Israeli agents and their allied operatives appear to regularly penetrate Iran and freely target its nuclear program, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. (IRGC) appears fixated instead on domestic activists and dual citizens it accuses of espionage.

That disconnect is raising questions even among staunch Iran loyalists about how an authoritarian regime obsessed with infiltrators has become so vulnerable to external threats. One root issue appears to be the cost of an ideological military force that sees itself as much more: The often hubristic self-image of the IRGC, created to protect the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has outstripped its capabilities.

In Iran, the vanguard security force seems more focused on internal dissent than on external threats. Is that a failure of imagination, or is the Guard overwhelmed by taking on too much?

Analysts say the Guard is overburdened, having assumed more and more functions of the state, thereby diluting its focus.

Incapable of preventing Mossad operations in Iran, the IRGC creates the illusion of intelligence superiority by hitting soft targets such as Iranian dual nationals, says Ali Alfoneh, an analyst and author of two books on the IRGCs rise.

They are distracted, and also I think myopic. They are looking for an easy win, says Afshon Ostovar, an Iran expert. They go after small-potato dissidents, or just invent them to begin with, because its something they can show the regime [and] everybody else.

LONDON

A veteran of 5,000 hours behind bars, accumulated during repeated bouts in prison and months in solitary confinement, Iranian Mohammad Reza Jalaeipour is very familiar with the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and with its obsessions.

So when the political activist was summoned for questioning in March just days after being warned by the IRGC to stop helping reformists find a consensus candidate for June 18 presidential elections, or face jail he expected arrest. He quickly posted a video on social media.

Describing himself as an unimportant and low-impact citizen, whose activities are not even worth mentioning, Mr. Jalaeipour said, addressing his interrogator: Im surprised at your tyranny; at least do it in an effective way!

In Iran, the vanguard security force seems more focused on internal dissent than on external threats. Is that a failure of imagination, or is the Guard overwhelmed by taking on too much?

He added, You put me in solitary confinement many times, and you realized every time that it does not work.

At a moment when Israeli agents and its allied operatives appear to regularly penetrate Iran and freely target its nuclear program, the episode highlights the fixation of the IRGCs intelligence branch instead on domestic activists and dual citizens it accuses of espionage, providing a window into its threat priorities.

The latest alleged Israeli attack, an explosion at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant April 11 that destroyed thousands of centrifuges the second devastating strike on Natanz in less than a year comes after Irans well-protected top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in broad daylight last December.

The disconnect between the attacks and the IRGCs focus is raising questions even among staunch loyalists of the Islamic Republic about how an authoritarian regime obsessed with infiltrators has become so vulnerable to external threats.

For Iran, one root issue appears to be the cost of an ideological military force that sees itself as much more. The often hubristic self-image of the IRGC, created to protect the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has outstripped its capabilities.

Analysts say the IRGC is overburdened, having assumed more and more functions of the state. As the IRGC fails repeatedly to prevent sabotage widely attributed to the Mossad, they say, it seeks to compensate by hitting domestic targets.

The IRGC at times loses sight of its main mission, due to its ever-expanding portfolios, says Ali Alfoneh, an analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Incapable of preventing Mossad operations in Iran, the IRGC creates the illusion of intelligence superiority by hitting soft targets such as Iranian dual nationals, says Mr. Alfoneh, the author of two books on the IRGCs rise.

They are distracted, and also I think myopic. They are looking for an easy win, says Afshon Ostovar, an Iran expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. They go after small-potato dissidents, or just invent them to begin with, because its something they can show the regime [and] everybody else.

But what they have not developed is a real unity of effort, and a real articulation of what the danger is, says Dr. Ostovar, author of Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Irans Revolutionary Guards.

Other inherent security vulnerabilities, say experts, are created by widespread economic discontent and inefficiencies in overlapping and redundant state institutions.

Irans economic hardship and corruption, says Mr. Alfoneh, eases recruitment of the citizenry by foreign powers.

Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters/File

Protesters burn the U.S. and Israeli flags during a demonstration against the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 28, 2020.

Its not just them looking in the wrong places [for threats], but really discounting how much discontent there is within Iran within the ranks of the government, the armed forces, the civil servants, says Dr. Ostovar. This isnt all political discontent, but it leaves people more susceptible to inducements that foreign intelligence services can offer them.

Even Mossad derived a benefit from Irans many intelligence distractions, according to the London-based Jewish Chronicle. In a detailed account of the Fakhrizadeh killing published in February, citing intelligence sources, it said a team of more than 20 spies both Israeli and local Iranian agents spent eight months getting close to their target and smuggling parts of a remote-controlled gun.

The audacious operation succeeded partly because Iranian security services were too busy watching suspected political dissenters, the Chronicle reported.

Those dots have been connected in Tehran, too, raising questions like never before about IRGC priorities.

Another fire at the Natanz nuclear facility isnt it a sign of how serious the issue of infiltration is? asked former commander of the IRGC, Mohsen Rezaei, in a tweet. The countrys security apparatus is in need of cleansing.

Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went further, asking about Irans $1.2 billion-per-year security apparatus: How is it that, instead of fighting off the enemy, you are standing against the people? How is it that the people have turned into the threat?

The political rationale might be simple.

The regime leadership is aware of the substandard performance of its institutions in the intelligence wars against foreign powers, says Mr. Alfoneh. But I also suspect they are content as long as those same institutions display full competence suppressing the domestic opposition, which has hitherto secured the regimes survival.

The IRGCs broadening remit includes a major role in the sanctions-strapped economy; supporting regional proxy forces from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen; building an expanding ballistic missile and drone program; and fighting a shadow war against the United States and Israel.

Yet it has also found time for lethal crackdowns on protests that left hundreds of Iranian citizens dead; made spectacles of arresting dual nationals and successfully luring dissidents within kidnapping range; and stepped into Irans vicious political fray.

The IRGC even produced an expensive TV series called Gando, a spy thriller that portrays it as invincible, while insinuating that the centrist President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are sellouts to archenemies America and Israel.

Mr. Zarif dismissed Gando as a lie, but sparked controversy in an interview leaked in late April when he said Iranian diplomacy was sacrificed to IRGC military interests. In the interview, for a government oral history project, he said the Guards much-revered Qods Force commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in an American drone strike in January 2020, sought to scupper the 2015 nuclear deal.

Days after the leak, IRGC intelligence agents reportedly raided the offices of President Rouhani and of Mr. Zarif, and carried away documents.

The political firestorm is the latest example of how Irans deep state of security and intelligence forces, which report to Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, continue to have power without accountability and dominate the weak state, writes Karim Sadjadpour, Iran analyst of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

While the Guards use of fear and coercion might be able to indefinitely sustain the Islamic Republics internal contradictions, this should not be mistaken for popular legitimacy, Mr. Sadjadpour wrote in The Atlantic in March. During four decades, the Islamic Republic proved adept at surviving but, like many revolutionary regimes, incapable of reforming.

And that creates a systemwide lack of unity that can lead to vulnerability.

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The regime itself is a compromise, between the ruling institutions and the supreme leader who sits on top of it, says Dr. Ostovar. Mr. Khamenei has not found a way to become a dictator and just impose a king-like efficiency to the system, and theres also an indigenous looseness to the system that allows these cracks and these fissures that can be exploited by Israel and whomever else.

IRGC efforts are complicated, too, by the scale of taking on the world, or at least a significant part of it, as an enemy, says Dr. Ostovar. Its difficult for them to keep up. Its got to be exhausting, because their foot is on the pedal all the time.

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Iran attacked: Is Revolutionary Guard looking the wrong way? - The Christian Science Monitor

Along with the blood, a lot of ink has been spilled over this weeks tragic events in Israel and Palestine. But one word has been missing from much of the analysis Iran.

The thousands of missiles streaking out of Gaza and into Israeli cities were either made, or paid for, by Tehran. Iran hopes to break the recent dtente between Israel and some Arab states via the outrage across the Muslim world at the loss of Palestinian lives. As the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) official Ramez al-Halabi said on Iraqi TV this week, We buy our weapons with Iranian money. An important part of our activity is under the supervision of Iranian experts I am proud to say that the rockets that are used to pound Tel Aviv have an Iranian signature on them. Social media throughout the Arab world has seen a surge of praise for Iran this week as the only country prepared to stand up to the Zionist entity although criticism from Arab governments has been relatively muted.

Read the original:
Iran's influence is on full display in Gaza - Reaction

The officer at the airport looked at me with menacing eyes. It dawned on me that I might not be allowed to embark on the plane. I was at Irans Imam Khomeini International Airport, prepared to get on my flight.

What do you think youre doing, leaving the country without a husband?

I told her I was single, held American citizenship and was going back to the U.S after three years abroad. She did not look satisfied with my explanation and appeared to want to pursue the matter further when her colleague took me aside. Taking a look at my American passport, and then my Iranian one, she handed them back to me and let me exit the terminal.

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Close call? An exit procedure? Or a charade to make women have second thoughts before traveling?

It never occurred to Samira Zargari to think twice. As head coach of Irans female national ski team, she was accompanying her team to the Alpine world championships in Italy. It was only upon her arrival at the airport that she realized she could not leave. In Iran, married women need their husbands legal permission to obtain a passport or leave the country, and Ms. Zargaris husband refused to let her travel.

Hers is just the latest in a slew of cases of women in Iran being denied freedom to travel. In 2015, athlete Niloufar Ardalans husband refused consent to renew her passport so she could participate in the Asian Championships in futsal, a version of soccer. In 2017, Paralympic gold medalist Zahra Nematis husband barred her from traveling to participate in competitions. Irans authorities were pressured to intervene and issue a special travel permit for her.

Yet there was no intervention for Ms. Zargari, who had to stay behind and cheer on her team from afar. She has posted Instagram stories expressing her hopes that one day all women in her country will be free to travel, and she believes that in unity, they will make it possible.

Ziba Kalhor, a professional skier in Iran whose coach is Ms. Zargari, considers the ordeal a senseless travesty.

Were talking about someone who supervises two assistant coaches and leads a team of five skiers, she told me. A perfectly capable adult whom the law has rendered incapable of leaving the country.

Kalhor believes these laws will be removed one day for all women. But for now, she said, They should at least prioritize women who operate on an international level those whose absence affects the standing of their country on the world scene.

Hasan Sakettabar, a lawyer in Iran, acknowledges the discriminatory nature of the law but said throughout his decade-long career, only three women have come to him with travel issues. In this country, women are more affected by problems such as securing their rights to pursue a career outside the home without their husbands say in the matter, he told me.

He said it is only when a high-profile individual gets barred from leaving the country and the media become involved that womens travel restrictions suddenly become a cause for concern. For a long time now, Iranian society has dealt with an onslaught of sanctions, inflations and Muslim travel bans which relegate womens travel issues to a back-burner, he said.

To date, the only way women in Iran can circumvent travel restrictions is for a marriage contract to include an unlimited right to travel without a husbands consent. Some have opted for this solution; even so, a man still has to give his consent for his wife to travel without consent!

In the aftermath of Ms. Zargaris ordeal, an online petition demanding a revision to laws surrounding womens exit procedures from the country was created. The petition, addressed to Irans parliament, has so far garnered more than 50,000 signatures. Many Iranian women have shared the petition on their social media accounts, with the Persian language equivalent of a hashtag saying, womens right to travel.

The travel issues Iranian women face are at odds with the fact that Irans heritage sites and natural wonders attract visitors from all over the world.

Ive been traveling the world for as long as I can remember. The experiences gained on my travels have shaped who I am. I have studied and pursued career opportunities abroad, a privilege that is only acquired through the freedom to travel. No woman should have to face hindrances to such freedom, particularly when her career and livelihood are at stake.

I dream of the day when every woman can spread her wings and dare to overcome. As Ms. Zargari says, together and in unity, it will happen.

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Opinion: Women in Iran can't travel abroad without their husband's permission. That's got to change. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Late last month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered an olive branch to his countrys main adversary. Speaking on Saudi television, the kingdoms de facto ruler said he seeks to have good relations with Iran.

That represents at least a rhetorical retreat for the Saudis, who are fighting a vicious and destructive war against Irans Houthi proxies in Yemen and were public supporters of former President Donald Trumps economic warfare against Iran. It was only three years ago that Prince Mohammed said that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes Hitler look good.

Now President Joe Biden has made clear he will not give the Saudis a blank check. He has pursued a path for the U.S. to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that would release billions of frozen revenues to Irans cash-strapped government.

So one explanation for the Saudis attempt at rapprochement with Iran is that Americas regional allies are adjusting to a new president with a new foreign policy. They are reading the tea leaves, said David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served as assistant secretary of state under Trump. The Saudis dont want to be left isolated or without U.S. support.

Yet this explanation goes only so far. U.S. diplomats tell me that the Saudis began their quiet outreach to Iran in late 2019, after a devastating missile attack on their oil infrastructure in September. The crown prince pleaded with Trump to respond to Irans escalation, but Trump declined. As a result, lower-level talks between the Saudis and Iranians began. The only difference between 2019 and 2021 is that there is a new U.S. administration and Prince Mohammed has publicly acknowledged this diplomacy.

After the Iranian missile attack, according to my sources, the State Department urged the Saudis to hold tight. In January 2020, a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and afterward Trump sent more U.S. forces to the region in a show of deterrence.

By contrast, the Biden administration has encouraged the kingdoms outreach to Iran. Schenker told me that it reminds him of the Arab outreach to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in the late 2000s. After the U.S. hosted a regional Arab-Israeli peace conference in 2007, several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, dropped their policy of isolation toward Syria as punishment for its role in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The Arab states went back to isolating Syria in 2011, after the regime launched a war against its own citizens that rages on to this day.

Then as now, the policy of the U.S. president influenced the relationships among its Arab allies. Whats different this time is that Americas Arab allies are now preparing for a Middle East where their most powerful friend is no longer around.

This explains why a country like the United Arab Emirates, the first Arab state to join the Abraham Accords with Israel, is also quietly pursuing a diplomatic dialogue with Iran. If the Biden administration follows through with its promise to begin Americas disentanglements in the Middle East, then Arab states will need as many friends and as few enemies as possible.

It will take a great deal of diplomatic skill for the UAE to balance a new friendship with Israel and a budding relationship with a regime committed to Israels destruction. Just last week, Irans Khamenei gave a speech making clear that Iran still would like to destroy the worlds only Jewish state.

Khamenei also had a message for the Arab states that have recognized Israel. Will the Jewish states normalization of relations with a few weak, pitiful countries be able to help that regime?! he asked on his English-language Twitter account.

For now, its clear that the Abraham Accords have helped Israel. Their lasting impact, however, depends on Israels new Arab friends coming around to the realization that feeding an Iranian crocodile only whets its appetite.

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Eli Lake: Why the Saudis are reaching out to Iran - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

The criteria has become so strict by the Guardian Council to qualify as candidates, that it is actually adding to the illegitimacy of the elections, said Iran Observer owner and IDC lecturer Meir Javedanfar. It is really undermining the legitimacy of the elections. It is really making it look like a competition between who is the most sycophant of the system, instead of who is the most qualified to address the peoples problems and the Iranian peoples challenges.

Though the president still must defer to Khamenei, the position often carries significant day-to-day power regarding Irans economic affairs, and sometimes control over its diplomatic positions.

Iran expert Dr. Raz Zimmt, a fellow at INSS and an editor at the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, agreed with Javedanfar that predictions at this point were difficult, but was willing to give some very initial estimates.

Zimmt said that there is no clear leader between the reformist or pragmatist camps, which gives the hard-line camp its biggest advantage in years.

Though there could be competition within the hard-line camp, especially with a variety of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials vying for the presidency, Zimmt said the initial front-runner could be Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi.

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Raisi was defeated by current President Hassan Rouhani in 2017, but garnered almost 16 million votes, close to 40% of the total vote, and Rouhani cannot run again having finished his second term.

However, like most candidates, Raisi has not yet officially declared his intentions. Multiple potential candidates, including Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Irans parliamentary speaker and a former mayor of Tehran, have said they would drop out if Raisi runs, said Zimmt.

Raisi is much less committed to the 2015 nuclear deal with the world powers and may work to indirectly undermine it.

Raisi, whose constituency is the hard-line clerical class, is allied with the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and may even be in line as successor to Khamenei.

Regarding the so-called pragmatist camp that accepts most of the foundations of clerical rule in Iran but is more open to negotiating certain issues with the West, Zimmt said the potential candidates are weaker than in the past.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has repeatedly said he will not run, though Zimmt thought that if he was running he might have had a real chance, and been able to press for some improvements in running the country.

Zarif though is hard to pin down, and could always make a last-minute change.

Zimmt said that another possible pragmatist candidate could be Iranian First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, though Jahangiri is weaker now as a candidate than he might have been four years ago because he is associated with Rouhani, who himself has been blamed by many Iranians for the poor economic situation.

Even if he runs, he is not seen as someone who could achieve any great changes, said Zimmt.

Besides those potential candidates, Zimmt said that former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani might have a chance as a candidate bridging the hard-line and pragmatist camps.

He would have his work cut out for him to convince the pragmatist and reformist camps to support him as the lesser of all evils.

Larijani is much more conservative even compared with Rouhani, said Zimmt, so it is not clear that he could garner pragmatist and reformist support, and doubtful that he could compete with Raisi for a majority in the hard-liner camp.

Zimmt was skeptical of reports that the IRGC, or former IRGC officials, would succeed at taking the presidency.

Many reports have talked about former IRGC official Saeed Mohammad, who at 53 is much younger than other top candidates.

But Zimmt said he might be disqualified by the Guardian Council as not having spent a sufficient cooling-off period since retiring from the IRGC, and for not having reached a sufficiently senior IRGC rank.

Mohammad was a top IRGC economic official, which might not be as easy to translate into political currency as it would be if he were a military commander.

Regarding other former IRGC officials who might compete, Zimmt said they would not necessarily foreshadow a greater IRGC takeover, as most of them have been out of the organization for 15-20 years.

Muhammad Ahmadinejad has also declared his candidacy, but Zimmt expected him to be disqualified as he was in 2017. Ahmadinejad fell out of favor with Khamenei in 2011 in the last couple of years of his presidency.

The Guardian Council will rule in late May on who can run.

Read more:
Iran's election competition for who is most sycophant - expert - The Jerusalem Post