If We Want to Help the Iranians, We Should Disrupt the IRGC
President Trump is considering military intervention to protect Iran’s legitimate protesters from the regime. I am not necessarily recommending intervention, but if we do, I have some thoughts on how it should be done. Unlike Venezuela, where targeting President Maduro was seen as a critical first step to modifying the government, the center of gravity of the Iranian regime is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is the glue that holds the rotting edifice together. The frightened old men who constitute the Grand Ayatollah and his Guardian Council are nothing without them, nor are the various ministries that comprise the executive branch of the government; they are technocrats and bureaucrats who have no real power outside their narrow responsibilities.
The IRGC is more powerful than the regular armed forces or the police. If it is nullified, the regime collapses under pressure from the mob. Unlike the Taliban and ISIS, the IRGC is very vulnerable to both air and cyber attack. In contrast to the Iranian nuclear program, the IRGC’s internal security forces have to operate in the open from fixed bases to intimidate the general public. We know where their key facilities are. They are not well hardened underground. Their Quds Force special operators are primarily geared toward supporting overseas terrorist groups; they may be relatively covert, but that limits their usefulness against civilian demonstrators.
Since its inception during the Iran-Iraq War, the IRGC has been the premier security force in the nation. The survivors of the hordes of young people who suicidally threw themselves against Iraqi fortifications in the 1970s have grown old, managing what has become not just a security force, but a for-profit business organization that owns much of the nation’s war production as well as the nuclear program. Its increasingly elderly leadership will do anything to maintain their elite status. If that organization is neutralized or forced underground by U.S. air strikes on their fixed installations and cyberattacks on their command and control systems, their ability to disrupt legitimate protests becomes nil. They might make effective insurgents in a civil war, but they would no longer be running the country.
By bombing their barracks and forcing them into hiding, we could ensure that they cannot intimidate the crowds trying to advocate regime change.
Military analyst William Lind once said that the best way to ultimately defeat an insurgency is to let them take over the government because, for once, we will know where they are. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is no longer either revolutionary or a true corps in the military sense of the word. By bombing their barracks and forcing them into hiding, we could ensure that they cannot intimidate the crowds trying to advocate regime change. As in 1979, without the iron hand of the palace guard, the regular army and police with likely refuse to try to suppress the crowds. Selective targeting of the IRGC barracks, headquarters, and supply facilities would paralyze their efforts to prop up the corrupt and increasingly fragile regime.
Unlike Venezuela, we really don’t care what a post-theocratic regime in Iran looks like. Even if it is hostile to U.S. and Western interests, it will be years before Iran can cause organized mischief in the region or rebuild its nuclear program. It would be great if Iran evolves into a stable democracy, but that is the business of the Iranian people. As heartless as it sounds, an internal civil war would not be in our worst interest as long as long as it it does not cross borders and destabilize the rest of the region.
A civil war would likely be a multi-sided affair involving monarchists, regime loyalists led by the IRGC, and those claiming to seek pure democracy. The latter would likely include radical socialists and what is left of the communists; that is a good reason for us to stay out of post-regime internal politics. What Iran looks like in the future will likely be determined by which side the regular security forces — army and police — come down on.
What we should avoid at all costs is a U.S. ground intervention. It is not needed and might actually incite the nationalistic Iranians to support the regime against us. If President Trump wants to assist the demonstration with U.S. power, it would be in our interest to use our air and cyberspace power to disrupt the IRGC and allow the Iranians to sort things out themselves.
READ MORE from Gary Anderson:
Regime Modification in Caracas
Stop Building Battleships, Start Building Fear
Learning From the Past, Leading in the Present
Gary Anderson has experience with regime change and/or nation-building attempts in Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International by the Mehr News Agency.