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Treasury takes positive step in uncovering Quds Force narcotics role

By Ali Alfoneh and Will Fulton

April 2, 2012, 11:36 am

On March 7, 2012 the United States Department of Treasury (USDOT) designated Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC QF) Brigadier General Gholamreza Baghbani, “current chief of the IRGC QF office in Zahedan,” as “a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker” under the Kingpin Act. USDOT elaborates in its charges: “Baghbani allowed Afghan narcotics traffickers to smuggle opiates through Iran in return for assistance…. For example, Afghan narcotics traffickers moved weapons to the Taliban on behalf of Baghbani. In return, General Baghbani has helped facilitate the smuggling of heroin precursor chemicals through the Iranian border. He also helped facilitate shipments of opium to Iran.”

The United States military has for some time expressed concern over the Islamic Republic’s efforts at arming the Taliban. Rumors of IRGC involvement in narcotics trafficking are similarly not new. USDOT has designated the IRGC QF for its terrorist activities, as well as several IRGC QF members, most recently targeting deputy commander Esmail Ghaani for his involvement in illicit arms shipments. This is the first instance, however, in which the U.S government has designated an individual linked to the Iranian government as a narcotics trafficker.

The radical change in the U.S. approach is best appreciated when one compares this designation with the Clinton administration’s praise for the Islamic Republic’s purported fight against narcotics trafficking in the 1990s. Mutual cooperation between Iran and the U.S. on this issue has indeed been a favorite theme for pundits advocating positive engagement with the Islamic Republic.

USDOT’s designation of Baghbani may demonstrate the pundits’ naiveté, but it is hardly sufficient to remedy the delusions of those who will argue that Baghbani is a rogue opportunist operating outside of the IRGC QF chain-of-command. Treasury is to be applauded for shining a light on the Quds Force’s role in narcotics trafficking. The next step in erasing any doubt that the Quds Force, and, ergo, the Iranian government, is involved in the global drug trade is to designate the organization under the Kingpin Act.

Ali Alfoneh is a resident fellow and Will Fulton is a Critical Threats Project analyst at AEI.

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New Commissar, New Problems: Khamenei’s New Representative to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards

By Ali Alfoneh and Will Fulton

September 16, 2011, 10:44 am

On September 14, 2011, Iran’s state-controlled media outlets announced that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had replaced Hojjat al-Eslam Esmail Sa’adatnezhad with Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Shirazi as his representative to the Quds Force–the elite unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) charged with conducting clandestine terrorist operations outside of Iran. Because of the Quds Force’s involvement in terrorist activities across the Middle East and its support for proxies actively targeting U.S. forces in the region, the implications of this personnel change and the individuals involved are worth considering.

On paper, Khamenei’s representatives and the ideological/political commissariat over which they preside wield significant power over the IRGC. The representatives act as the eyes and ears of the Supreme Leader and ensure the IRGC’s subordination to the civilian leadership’s control. Shirazi, however, will most likely find his powers severely limited by the strong-willed commander of the IRGC Quds Force, Major General Qassem Suleimani. So long as Shirazi restricts himself to preaching loyalty to the Supreme Leader among Quds Force members, a tolerable cohabitation between Shirazi and Suleimani is quite possible, but should Shirazi dare to challenge Suleimani’s authority over operational issues, clashes between the two men are unavoidable.

The elderly Sa’adatnezhad, Khamenei’s previous representative to the IRGC Quds Force, is a reticent cleric, who made public statements only on very rare occasions. Sa’adatnezhad would, for example, warn against “expressing opinions contrary to the words of the guardian and divine leader [Khamenei],” equating such transgressions to “polytheism,” and asserting that the “identity of Hezbollah is adherence to the guardianship of the jurist [Khamenei’s authority].” Sa’adatnezhad’s low profile and carefully crafted non-military statements made clear that he did not intend to challenge Suleimani’s authority. Accordingly, there are no reports of clashes between Sa’adatnezhad and Suleimani in the open source.

Shirazi, on the other hand, is an altogether different breed of cleric. Shirazi has hitherto served as the Supreme Leader’s representative to the IRGC Navy, and is perhaps best known for asserting in 2010 that Iran was prepared to use IRGC Navy forces to escort humanitarian aid ships bound for Gaza. Shirazi also made news in 2008 when he warned, “The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe … If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran’s first targets and they will be burned.” Shirazi later reaffirmed this sentiment when he wrote in the Persian-language daily Partow-e Sokhan that “if the Iranian nation becomes angry, they will not let anything be left of America and Israel.”

The substance of Shirazi’s statements may not necessarily clash with Suleimani’s ideology or strategic thinking, but the very fact that Shirazi keeps such a high profile in the Iranian press and frequently involves himself in directing the IRGC’s military activities will undoubtedly provoke a conflict with the commissarial leadership of the Quds Force and Suleimani. The outcome of those conflicts could serve as a measure of Suleimani’s authority in the IRGC Quds Force and the Islamic Republic in general. Should Shirazi’s leadership stimulate any inert division within Iran’s “primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad,” we may soon witness significant changes within the Quds Force command hierarchy, and potential changes to its regional strategy.

Ali Alfoneh is a resident fellow and Will Fulton is a Critical Threats Project analyst at AEI.

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Fearing a 2009 Repeat: Iran’s Instability

By Ali Alfoneh and Will Fulton

September 13, 2011, 11:20 am

As Iran’s March 2012 parliamentary elections grow nearer, the Islamic Republic’s authorities are increasingly concerned that the country will experience public protests similar to those seen after the fraudulent 2009 presidential election. The regime is desperately trying to prevent intensified factional infighting—specifically between supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hardliner challengers—fearing it would reveal the depth of factionalism among Iran’s ruling elite.

In his August 31, 2011 sermon, Iran’s head of state Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that elections should not become “a challenge to the security of the state.” In line with this rhetoric, the Islamic Republic’s authorities have established the Principalists’ Unity Committee in an attempt to minimize factional infighting among the Iranian hardliners. These attempts at unifying the hardliners, however, have been challenged by the formation of yet another political faction, known as the “Islamic Revolution Resistance Front” (IRRF).

The IRRF criticizes Ahmadinejad’s policies, but within its ranks there is a heavy presence of erstwhile Ahmadinejad supporters. Its leader, Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, is former spiritual advisor to the president. The financial backer of the IRRF, Sadeq Mahsouli, served in two ministerial posts under Ahmadinejad. Three more of Ahmadinejad’s former ministers count themselves among IRRF’s members, as do current and former advisors to the president. Their presence has made some of the president’s adversaries speculate that the IRRF’s criticism of Ahmadinejad is a deceptive tactic and a means for the president to extend his power beyond his second term.

Yet the diversity of the IRRF’s membership indicates otherwise, as it also includes some of Khamenei’s most ardent defenders among its ranks, such as: Ayatollah Aziz Khoshvaght, a member of the Assembly of Experts and father-in-law to Khamenei’s son Mostafa; Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, former parliament speaker and father-in-law to Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, and; Hojjat al-Eslam Ali-Reza Panahian, one-time representative of Khamenei to Iran’s universities and deputy head of the think tank devoted to disseminating the leader’s revolutionary ideology.

What is the glue that binds members of the IRRF? Aside from its hardline base, the only thread linking this disparate faction is its desire to survive looming political turmoil. Beyond the 2012 parliamentary elections lies the 2013 presidential vote; both of these events are sure to bring simmering hostilities to a boil with uncertain consequences. Once again, Iran’s elites are responding to unpredictable political conditions with rapid fluidity, abandoning long-term alliances in favor of short-term survival pacts.

The true depth of division among Iran’s hardliners has been made evident by the Machiavellian maneuverings over the course of the past two years by Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, yet the factional conflict unfolding in the run-up to the parliamentary elections is perhaps more revealing. Despite Khamenei’s ceaseless declamations about unity in the Islamic Republic, Iran’s political system is plagued by a disintegrative instability that is an impediment to internal progress and external relations.

With the future of Iran’s leadership difficult to discern from within, it is near impossible to engage from without. Come 2012, Washington-based proponents of negotiations with the Islamic Republic may find their argument an even harder sell than before.

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Conflict Potential: Iran’s Shared Oil and Gas Fields

By Ali Alfoneh and Will Fulton

September 12, 2011, 11:24 am

When Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi delivered his first major interview in July 2011, more than six months after his appointment by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he did little else but parrot the Islamic Republic’s ideological platitudes of the past three decades: Iran is willing to establish ties with any country (sans Israel), including the United States, unless the United States “behaves in its own way,” at which point, “dialogue or political negotiation … is out of the question.” Salehi’s performance will keep him in office, for a time, but he does not address Iran’s most pressing problem: due to diplomatic isolation and the international sanctions regime, Iran’s oil industry is in decline and losing money.

Though it has not dissuaded the Islamic Republic from accelerating the development of its nuclear program, sanctions have created severe problems for Iran’s oil industry. An August 2011 report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed that, since their last report, “foreign firms [had] significantly decreased commercial activity in Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemical sectors.”

Lacking offshore oil extraction technology and foreign investments, most responsible decision-makers would have recalculated the costs and benefits of a nuclear program—the root of Iran’s diplomatic isolation and the international sanctions regime—but the Islamic Republic has done otherwise. On July 26, Ahmadinejad appointed Rostam Qasemi, former chief of the Revolutionary Guards’s Khatam al-Anbia Construction Base—whose name also appears on U.S. and EU sanctions lists—as oil minister. When asked about declining domestic oil production capacity in a recent meeting with Iran’s energy commission, Qasemi “did not provide a definite answer.”

Iran’s declining oil production and money problems have great conflict potential. Iran’s neighbors who are not inhibited by sanctions or financial troubles extract oil and gas from fields shared with Iran, while their Persian counterparts watch on in despair. South Pars oil illustrates the problem: Qatar—which is geographically smaller than the oil and gas field—extracts 360 million cubic meters from the field, while Iran extracts 210 cubic meters. Qatar extracts 450,000 barrels per day from oil fields shared with Iran, while Iran extracts none! The same goes for the oil and gas fields Iran shares with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

At his inauguration ceremony, Qasemi called the development of these shared fields his “top priority.” Such rhetoric will not suffice so long as the sanctions regime denies Iran access to external financing and technology. As the still poorer Iran watches its neighbors reap profits from shared oil and gas fields, disputes over resources and territorial boundaries can quickly escalate, as was the case in 1999 when Iranian troops entered Iraqi territory following a disagreement over the shared al-Fakkah oil field. The Islamic Republic has yet to learn that avoiding international sanctions and diplomatic isolation provides a more suitable pathway to becoming a responsible regional power than does recklessly flexing military muscle.

Ali Alfoneh is a resident fellow and Will Fulton is a Critical Threats Project analyst at AEI.

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