Increased Belligerence and Terrorism Makes the Expulsion of IRGC from Region Critical

The Middle East has been in continued turmoil throughout the past few years, as Iran’s influence has continued to grow. The role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been key in the growth of that influence. In the attack on Kirkuk and various other cities of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is just another example of the IRGC’s destructive role in regional crises.

“The Iraqi Army and Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Shaabi) are not the only ones who attack us. We have 100% accurate knowledge that the IRGC are also present among them,” said the Peshmarga Force commander on Sunday. Other evidence seems to indicate that IRGC commanders are all over the region, and have been instrumental in various attacks, not only in Iraq, but in other countries.

Documents and information proving that Mohandis and Al-Amiri are IRGC mercenaries have been disclosed by the Iranian Resistance since the 1990s. Both names were among the list of 32,000 Iraqi mercenaries of the IRGC, which was disclosed by the Iranian Resistance on January 2007.

“I am particularly concerned by media reports that Iranian and Iranian-backed forces are part of the assault,” said U.S. Senator John McCain, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

However, the IRGC hasn’t been deterred in the slightest. IRGC Brigadier, Iraj Masjedi, the regime’s current ambassador in Iraq, is also a top commander of the Quds Force. He has played a key role in the regime’s terrorist operations, particularly in Iraq and Syria. This intensification of IRGC activities have made it critical to evict the IRGC from Syria and Iraq, but the region as a whole.

It becomes even more important in light of the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization by the United States. President Trump has indicated that the U.S. is changing its policy regarding Iran, which means that appeasement is at an end. The country is now looking to face consequences for its actions, no matter what they may be.

The IRGC has a long history of internal suppression of the Iranian people and the export of terrorism throughout the Middle East, two pillars that have supported the regime and kept it in power for all these years.

“Assistance to the movements (i.e. terrorist and extremist groups) had begun since 1979, and they would occasionally go to the section of Mr. Rafighdoost, who headed the IRGC’s logistics unit, and would get money, weapons, and location,” said Javad Mansouri, a first commander of the IRGC in 1979 and the deputy minister of foreign affairs in 1981. “Since April 1981, the Office of the Movements was officially established in the IRGC…In 1981, Martyr Rajai was the head of the Foreign Ministry and I was his deputy and we had regular meetings. At one of the meetings, I told him that there are eight entities that receive money from the government for the export of revolution activities. You gather the officials of these eight institutions and appoint one person and tell him I will give the budget to this person and he will divide it and everyone must be accountable to him.”

Mansouri also indicated that a number of foreign policy issues are not under the control of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, but are in fact being controlled by the IRGC.

In addition to the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, the IRGC plays a major role in inflaming, expansion or continuation of several other major wars in the Middle East, such as those in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, whose casualties and displacements after are unprecedented after World War II. But there are more examples beyond Syria and Iraq.

- In the Yemen war, thousands of people have been killed and three million people have been displaced according to reports by the United Nations.

- The IRGC has either active terrorist and fundamentalist interventions or is engaged in creating espionage and terrorist networks and sending weapons to Bahrain, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

- One of the hundreds of Quds Force terrorist operations is the bombing that targeted the U.S. Marines Corps in the Saudi Arabia’s Khobar Towers on June 25, 1996, killing 19 Americans and injuring about 400 people. The operation was conducted under the command of Brigadier General Ahmad Sharifi, Commander of the Quds Force section known as section 6,000.

Yet, these are just a few examples of the external pressure being put on the Middle East from the IRGC. But that doesn’t include the internal suppression of the Iranian people. Popular uprisings have been violently put down, because they are considered a threat to the power base of the regime itself. Protesters are beaten, tortured, and imprisoned for standing up to the regime.

In addition, the IRGC controls large amounts of capital and is a key part of the economy of Iran. All this shows that they are a cancer that needs to be removed from the region to bring peace to the region and the Iranian people.