whiterock said:
Oldbear83 said:
The Revolutionary Guard is not exactly the military. More like internal security to keep people from being able to protest the mullahs.
Not exactly. It would be more accurate to describe the IRGC as a conventional military unit with a specific purpose - to defend and project the islamic revolution. At home, they protect the clerics and the religious institutions; abroad, they supply, train, & lead Hizballah, Hamas, et al.... If our soldiers end up in combat anywhere in the world with Iranian soldiers, it will almost certainly be with IRGC. Artesh, by comparison is a conventional military charged with defending Iran from invasion across its borders. IRGC is the expeditionary force. Artesh apparently has no expeditionary mission at all. IRGC would actually be more analogous to our special forces units.
The true "internal security" is the Basij. Like the IRGC, it's function is focused on promoting/defending the islamic revolution at home. The police are more like the Artesh.....normal police functions: parking tickets, traffic control, law & order on crime, etc...where regime stability is not in question. Rob or defraud someone? Police come se you and take you to jail for prosecution. Your daughter shows up at a demonstration without proper islamic covering? Basij come see you and start torturing her for the infractions of dress violation and insufficient enthusiasm to the revolution (regime).
They way to pick at that structure is to go after the IRGC and Basij, and leave the military & police relatively unscathed. Latter are the only institutions with weapons and command structures to contend with the former. So you have to apply enough pressure to incentivize the Police/Artesh to act by illustrating that IRGC/Basij is the root cause of all the pressure, and that IRGC/Basij no longer have the ability to resist a challenge from Police/Artesh.
I don't think we're there yet, but it's steadily moving that direction. We've provoked IRGC to sideline the political leadership (to protect the revolution). So any collapse will now be squarely on the revolution. And Artesh & Police are relatively unscathed so far (sending the message that we do not see them as a problem).
I also think the situation needs to be understood in context of the participants and goals.
The Iranian government is by no means consolidated right now. Decapitation strikes have removed the Ayatollahs at several levels, and as you observed the military is not presently united either, with the US acting in various ways to replace the Jihadists with more pragmatic individuals. Those handling special materials (
anything involved with the nuclear program) are in hiding or seclusion, and there is doubt about whether they are in useful communication with each other.
Against that backdrop, the US team (
the real negotiators, not the three people highlighted by the White House) has to decide what goals are actually possible to accomplish, who on the Iranian side might negotiate in good faith, and what to do about the officials for Iran who want to derail negotiations.
The members of the US team aside from Witkoff, Kushner, and Rubio have not been publicly identified, except that they come from the State Department, Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. What is not commonly known, is that the State Department often uses business leaders as SMEs for negotiating insights with certain countries, because different countries will use different tactics and style in negotiating. This applies to Iran despite the hostility over the last several decades, because these business leaders would still be familiar with Iran's style in negotiating sensitive agreements.
These leaders would therefore be able to make recommendation on pivots and counters the US could use to Iranian stunts. It's well in character for Iran to have negotiations which start/stop/restart, as Iran seeks to gain advantage when dealing with more powerful nations, as happened when Iran negotiated with Russia and China in past years.
The key question remains about who is speaking for Iran, and whether they have the authority to make a real deal. It's a long process and not for the thin-skinned.
