The Iranian Revolutionary Guard--Terrorists?

Usually the Geek deals with the past as it was. Unlike Newt Gingrich (who has, like the Geek, a PhD in history--a similarity the Geek detests) the ole Geekmo doesn't write "alternative history."

Today an exception must be made.

Let's take a grip on an imaginary history.

First, the truth. Shortly before coming to power, Adolph Hitler created a special security unit to act as his personal bodyguard. In the years following, this small detachment grew and was renamed the Shutzstaffel or SS. It became more than a bodyguard--much more.

Now for imagination.

In the late 1930s the Nazi leadership recognised that their military and its supporting industrial infrastructure were not yet strong enough to take on a combination of enemies that would in all probability eventually include the US and the USSR. The leadership also understood that this did not mean Germany must sit idly waiting for the moment when its strength would peak in comparison to its enemies.

The key to allowing German military-industrial might to grow while inhibiting the actions of others such as Great Britain, the US, and the USSR lay in exploiting political tensions and ethnic, linguistic, and religious factions in neighboring countries. What was required was a highly dedicated, sophisticated, and flexible force of political warriors.

As an added benefit, a force of this nature would be invaluable in maintaining the Nazi regime in power against internal threats such as the Jews, Socialists, and any who groaned under the economic and political sacrifices the regime deemed necessary.

The force existed. It was the SS. SS men were carefully selected, well trained, and thoroughly indoctrinated in Nazi ideology and the quasi-religious beliefs of its leader, Heinrich Himmler. It was good for go. All that was necessary was to wind up the boys and point them in the right direction.

The German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia provided suitable areas to operate. Local Germans would raise the banner of insurgency. The SS would provide training, support, and, where appropriate, special actions. (Note: the term "special actions" appearing in so many Nazi documents refers to assassinations of political leaders in target countries and the execution of spectacular acts of terror with maximum civilian body counts in which the goal was destabilization of the target government.}

Between 1937 and 1940, more than fifty major acts of terror were undertaken by SS men in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the three Baltic States. Planned "special actions" directed against targets in France, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries were interdicted by the security forces of those countries.

While conducting actions in support of the growing insurgencies on Germany's eastern and southeastern borders, the SS was developing an ever greater industrial capacity separate from the greater German capacity. The SS internal empire received subsidies and other support from Hitler and his inner circle since its factories, R&D facilities, and personnel worked on the most advanced technology weapons and equipment.

Intelligence reports reaching the United States as well as the statements of fugitives from the German and SS states convinced Franklin Roosevelt that Germany generally and the political army of the SS in particular represented a threat to the peace of the Central European region and the US. When normal diplomacy brought no satisfactory results and the League of Nations proved unequal to the task, FDR sought international cooperation in the form of economic sanctions against Germany.

Some European nations agreed and imposed sanctions in tandem with the US. Others thought the American president had some sinister US self-interest in his sights, and not the general well being of Europe. These countries ignored the US appeal and even the intelligence developed by their own services and continued normal commercial and diplomatic relations with Germany.

Himmler's boys kept hard at work, blowing things up, killing people, training guerrillas, and developing new weapons, including one which depended upon the splitting of the uranium atom.

FDR finally blew the whistle characterizing the SS as a "threat to world peace and a promoter of terrorism." Legislation was sought and passed which allowed the imposition of severe sanctions on any country or enterprise which dealt directly or indirectly with an entity found by the President to be a "sponsor or implementer of terrorism."

The SS was immediately put on the list of such entities.

If FDR had actually been able to deal with the SS and Germany in such terms in 1939 perhaps this would have staved off the start of World War II. Perhaps not. We can't rewind the tape and try this option.

Back to complete reality. Get a firm grip on it.

While we can't rewind the tape, we can draw important lessons from history. Lessons that we cannot ignore with impunity today.

One thing we do know now is that both the Nazi government and the SS were sponsors of terrorism. We know now how eagerly (and fortunately, quite inefficiently) the Germans sought the atomic bomb. We know now how vast the SS industrial and commercial empire was. We well understand the role of a force of political warriors in both internal oppression and external nastiness.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a political army. It is also a large industrial and commercial entity. It is also the heart of advanced weapons development and production. It is also in charge of dirty deeds done outside Iran including the support and training of guerrilla units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The IRGC joins with the SS and Stalin's NKVD (later the KGB) as a state within a state with special privileges and unique duties. Like the alphabetical monsters, the IRGC drips blood in its path. Like its predecessors it survives to intimidate, to coerce, to terrorise.

The current administration would be both correct and acting in the best interests of not only the United States but the world generally if it goes ahead and lists the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. It is not a part of the Iranian armed forces anymore than were the SS or the NKVD/KGB.

Merely calling the IRGC part of the Iranian defense establishment does not change its basic character as a political army. Neither does the IRGC's possession of conventional tanks, planes, or ships any more than the creation of the elite Nazi combat units of the Waffen SS changed that organization's nature.

The loud screaming of late by a senior cleric, a member of the Council of Experts, warning the United States not to go forward with its threats shows the Iranian mullahocracy takes the administration's position seriously. The bravado expressed by this same cleric that Iranians would look at the branding of the IRGC with national pride cannot hide reality.

That reality?

Tehran is announcing that the terrorist shoe fits the IRGC foot.