The Revolutionary Guard, continued

My two previous posts were about Robin Wright’s thinly veiled attempt to influence opinion against the US government’s plan to brand the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror organization.

Far more interesting than the essentially trivial Wright, the IRGC (known as the Pasdaran) has itself commented on the possibility as follows (as quoted by the BBC):

In a statement published by Iran’s Mehr news agency, the IRGC condemned the plan as “worthless resolutions” issued “dauntlessly and under baseless pretexts… to damage this holy institution”.

“Those who are enchanted by the material world fail to realise the depth of the spiritual power and iron determination of the devoted members of the IRGC, which have roots in the religious beliefs of the people, and will witness the definite victory of the children of Islam against global infidelity,” the statement said.

What’s interesting here, of course, is that the Revolutionary Guard responds in religious terms. It almost sounds insane to us (people like Wright probably don’t even believe it’s real) but this is the voice of Khomeini’s 1979 revolution still speaking loud and clear. National borders meant little to Khomeini. We are all intended to be part of Allah’s kingdom (not nation states like the United States, Iraq or even Iran). It’s important to note that the Iranian Army and the Revolutionary Guard are separate entities. The latter has the power and the IRGC’s actions are based on Khomeini’s weird eschatology. In that way they are arguably more dangerous than, though similar to, the Sunni Al Qaeda who are driven only to reinstate the caliphate. Those who advocate negotiations with the Iranian regime would do well to explain to us skeptics why they think the Khomeinists (Ayatollah Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Larijani, etc.) don’t believe their own ideology. So far, all indications are that they do.