Destroying The IRGC With Foes From Within
Iran is losing the war. Now comes the decisive pressure
Ismail Qaani kept missing out on Israeli decapitation strikes that killed his colleagues in batches. After one coincidence too many, the Quds Force commander was reportedly detained by the regime and his fate remains unknown. Adding to suspicions, Qaani was left off the list of targets the IDF said they had wanted to eliminate from the IRGC leadership. Either Qaani really has been working for the Israelis this whole time, and his luck has run out, or the Israelis keep letting him live to mess with their heads. Either way, what an incredible story.
Reacting to stories about Israel hacking the entire Tehran traffic camera network, Nico DeMattia muses at Jalopnik that “it seems a bit fishy that any intelligence agency would tip their hat and reveal the tactics used to assassinate a world leader. I’m no expert in spy craft, but I’m not sure they typically engage in show and tell.” Until they do, and when they do, they always have a reason. In this example, Israel wants the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to know that Tehran is unsafe for them. Powerful internal enemies and omniscient external enemies, foes within and foes without: this is psychological pressure, and it is working.
This week, the United States hit the building where clerics were supposed to vote on a replacement for the supreme leader. Then reports came out of Iran that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been selected, though it was not clear who had selected him, or when. Israel made it clear they would remove the son like the father, and then Mojtaba reportedly turned the offer down. This kabuki theatre scene ended with today’s announcement that the selection of a new supreme leader has been postponed indefinitely. Donald Trump is already exercising a veto over the supreme leadership. Anyone who tells you that Iran is winning this war is simply not paying attention, or just lying.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam banned Hezbollah’s military activities and the Lebanese Army began confiscating weaponry this week. The IDF killed the commander of the Quds Force Lebanon Corps, and appears poised to enter southern Lebanon and put an end to the remaining rocket forces there. Iran’s proxy is being systematically dismantled while the commander of IRGC proxy forces remains hidden like the 12th Imam under suspicion of being an Israeli spy. Israeli filmmaker Evyatar Rosenberg created this satirical AI video of Ismail Qaani setting up the supreme leader for his decapitation strike. Another satirical meme going around today reports Qaani arriving safe in Israel, and congratulates him for his brilliant success.
At the end of one week, missile and drone launches are in single digits. Airports are already reopening in the Persian Gulf. Insurers say that Hormuz transits will resume this weekend. It has been made possible by IDF and American jets loitering in Iran’s skies to strike IRGC launchers wherever they appear. A missile is a precision instrument that requires a precision launching platform, so attacking them has drastically reduced the volume of Iran’s salvoes. B-2 bunker buster strikes on the underground launcher facility at Damavand have crushed the IRGC’s launch rates. Iran is no longer able to strike out at everyone, everywhere, all at once, according to the prewar plan.
Now comes the part where the IRCC must improvise and adapt to overcome the challenges to their survival as an organization. I do not think they can achieve this. Iran’s war plan was conceived as regionwide revenge rather than Death to Israel. Trump appears to have pulled the trigger anticipating that if Iran was allowed to act first, the regional damage would have been far greater than it is now. China was the key enabler in this ambition, providing missile components and technology to build up Iran’s arsenal as a deterrent.
Now that the IRGC’s war plan has culminated, that deterrent is neutralized. Iran’s neighbors have received only just enough damage to bring them off the sidelines into the war, and nowhere near enough damage to stop them from resuming business as usual with a war risk premium. A new phase of the conflict is at hand today. The Trump administration is reportedly arming thousands of Kurdish fighters to challenge the regime in western Iran and preparing to seize the oil hub at Kharg Island and deprive the IRGC of revenue.
“I’m once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military, and the police to lay down their arms,” Trump said at the White House yesterday. “Now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country.” Those who surrender will be “perfectly safe with total immunity”, while those who resist will “face absolutely guaranteed death”. Calling on Iran’s diplomats to defect, it was a clear communication to the IRGC that they have no control over the situation, anymore.
The navy that Iran had rebuilt after the inglorious 48-hour defeat of Operation Praying Mantis in 1988 was destroyed again in 48 hours. Indeed, nothing seems to have stung Iran’s allies on social media as badly as the destruction of the IRIS Dena, an Iranian corvette, 19 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka, by an American submarine using a Mk-48 torpedo. According to the paroxysms of rage on the internet, this was a war crime that took place in the middle of the ocean. Turns out that, contrary to the complaints of the chattering classes, the American submarine did in fact contact Sri Lankan authorities to conduct search and rescue.
This, along with low-quality Iranian rockets that misfire, is why I give stories about supposed stray bombs hitting girls’ schools zero credibility until they are proven true through a deliberate, forensic, postwar examination. Propaganda is the first resort of losers. The insane reaction to this torpedo sinking is the same bog-standard rationalization of defeat that sycophants of the Islamic Republic always display in defeat: It was an inside job, like with Ismail Qaani. It was treachery by the Americans for not announcing their intentions to torpedo an armed warship at sea. Iran has not really even begun to fight, yet, and this was only a taste of what will come, just you wait. It is all cope, and it is how organizations like the IRGC always repeat their failures by never examining them.
On another level, the insane reaction of some westerners to the torpedoing of a warship can be explained by the incredible damage Trump is inflicting on the credibility of “the NGO-administrative complex”, as Jennica Pounds terms it. The war has revealed that “those backing the so-called ‘rules-based liberal international order’ actually wanted Ali Khamenei’s regime to remain in place. Actions speak louder than words. For an order that defines itself by the spread of democracy, this is a striking paradox.”
To these establishment voices, “the relevant organizing principle of global foreign policy is not which civilizational bloc you belong to. It is whether you believe the United States should maintain a sovereign military presence and bilateral relationships in the world—or whether American power must be subordinated to multilateral frameworks and institutional consensus.” The people screeching about ‘international law’ right now have been the problem all along. They are watching the IRGC break, and it is breaking them.