Madam Secretary, You've Got It Wrong

Secretary of State Clinton described Iran as a "military dictatorship" in the making during her current show-their-flags tour of the Mideast. The purpose of the SecState's diplomatic blitz is the gaining of open support for a new round of sanctions from the oil sheikdoms of the Gulf. As an add-on of some importance, she is attempting to lever Saudi Arabia into guaranteeing China's oil supply in the event Iran cuts back on its shipments following the imposition of new sanctions.

One of the gambits being employed by Ms Clinton--and the rest of the Obama administration--is focusing on the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Obama team is taking the line that the IRGC constitutes a privileged elite and sanctions targeted on it will not hurt the Iranian people generally and may help the political opposition.

Secretary Clinton has taken the line to its next logical extent when she averred the IRGC was a nascent military dictatorship surpassing in power both the "elected" civilian government and the clerical establishment. While this reasoning sounds good it suffers from one minor flaw: It is as wrong as a cow growling.

The nature of the error can be understood quite easily from an apposite historical analogy. In Nazi Germany the SS ran its own industries, controlled much of the advanced technology development, and operated its own rather substantial economy. It was a state-within-a-state.

At no time, not even in the closing weeks of the war, did the SS either control or dictate terms to the regime of Adolph Hitler. Despite having his own rather substantial and certainly very well equipped private army the head of the SS, Himmler, never threatened a coup, never took over functional control of the Nazi apparatus. Rather, Himmler and his very large establishment were complete and effective servants of the regime and the ideology behind it.

The same phenomena were at work over the years in the Soviet Union. The organs of state security were states within states. So also was the Red Army. Yet at no time did these bodies present a threat to the Party and regime. Authoritarian? Yes. Military dictatorship? Not a chance.

So it is in Iran. The IRGC is both a state within a state and a very loyal and dedicated servant of the regime and the ideology upon which the regime and state rest. There is no hint, nor is there any real potential, of the IRGC taking over the reins of power and changing the semi-theocracy of today into the military dictatorship of tomorrow.

Right now Iran is a semi-theocracy. Today, there are some democratic features at work in the political processes. However, the current system is not dynamically stable. The assorted pressures at work within Iranian social, political, and economic life are shoving the country ever closer to an authoritarian theocracy. When this happens, the IRGC will be the key instrument of regime maintenance. It will be (with a tip of the hat to the old Soviets) "the sword and the shield of the revolution" even more than it is presently.

The IRGC will not become a "military dictator" and Iran will not be a "military dictatorship." Ms Clinton has it wrong with her animadversion.

The coming Iranian theocracy will be a legitimate product of Islamic religious, which is to say, Islamic political thought. A theocratic state is totally compatible with Islam. It is not pushing the envelop to assert that a theocratic state is organic to the precepts of the Koran.

The leadership and most, if not all, the members of the IRGC are ideologically sound. They are good, observant Muslims of the Shia branch. Thus their loyalties are to the ideology espoused by the clerical establishment of Iran and the principles first laid down by Ayatollah Khomeini.

The IRGC will carry out its many missions both at home and abroad, military and industrial, overt and covert, with dedication, ruthlessness, and a degree of efficiency. It will not, however, become the government. Nor will it replace the clerical establishment with one of its own manufacture.

Ms Clinton and her fellows in the Obama administration may not like to admit the real deal. The target of all diplomacy, sanctions and, if need be, war is not and will never be the IGRC but rather the religious ideology and eschatological orientation of the regime in both its civilian and clerical components. The target is and will be, in the words of an Australian judge passing sentence on five convicted wannabe jihadists, "intolerant, inflexible religious conviction."

Without going into the morass of Islam generally, suffice it to note that the Iranian regime of the past thirty-one years has shown itself to be motivated by "intolerant, inflexible religious conviction." Even the often praised in the West leaders of the "Green Movement" since last June share the basic premises of the clerics and the current Tehran government--and the IRGC.

It is the same "intolerant, inflexible religious convictions" which have made it impossible for normal diplomatic means--including sanctions--to have any positive, lasting effect on the Iranian courses of action. Far more than any mere "military dictatorship," Iran today is immune to the typical blandishments and coercions of the Great Game of Nations.

This is a harsh reality for the touchy-feely types of the post-Modern, multi-cultural elite to accept. They cannot bring themselves to believe that a regime in today's world can actually find its strength in a set of religious precepts laid down in the Arabian desert more than a thousand years ago. They cannot wrap their minds around the concept of "theocracy" even as it both stares them in the face and threatens to bite them in the tush.

So, as a sort of default state, the lawyerly minds of Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and the rest of the crew fall back on an irrelevant boogieman from the past--the "military dictatorship." With "thinking" of that sort, we had best prepare ourselves for a world with a nuclear capable Iran--or a war which can only be won in a narrowly technical sense.