More clouds on Iran’s horizon?
Iran’s not been having a great week.
This could end up being a big deal, re the Iranian Deal:
Germany, France and the United Kingdom have launched a formal dispute mechanism against Iran which could end up putting international sanctions on the regime. The measure was announced on Tuesday following recent Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. The dispute will now be brought before a Joint Commission made up of Iran, Russia, China, the three European signatories, and the European Union. If the panel fails to resolve the dispute, the matter will then come before the United Nations Security Council.
Even if the process gets stalled at the UN, Iran could end up facing comprehensive international sanctions — in addition to the current U.S. sanctions, media reports suggest. “If the Security Council does not vote within 30 days to continue sanctions relief, sanctions in place under previous UN resolutions would be reimposed – known as a “snapback”…
It’s not time to get too excited about this. But still, it’s noteworthy that the nations in question – Germany, France, and the UK – might be willing to go along with new sanctions. Even if Iran’s buddy Russia blocks a Security Council vote, the snapbacks might come into play. None of these nations have a history of being tough on Iran – au contraire – so that’s why I put “might” in italics.
Internally, there’s also a seeming split brewing [hat tip: commenter “Sergey”] among the forces in Iran, specifically between the mullahs and the military. This has the potential of becoming big, as well, because history tells us that if the military and/or security forces such as police start refusing to defend a regime, the end may be nigh for the dictators. Whether or not we are anywhere near that point in Iran remains to be seen, but the report is that Iran’s leadership is claiming that not only was the military responsible for the shootdown (on its own?), but they didn’t tell those innocent leaders about the shootdown until Friday, although it happened early Wednesday morning in Iran. So all those denials by the government, and all those lies those leaders told, weren’t lies at all – they were just in the dark.
Riiiight. If so, then why didn’t they just say in their initial statements that they didn’t know why it crashed, and that they were investigating? That would actually be the normal thing for a government to say under the circumstances. Why did they immediately say it was technical difficulties, and anyone who said otherwise was a liar?
I doubt there are many people on the face of the earth who believe the regime at this point, but Iran’s leaders must go through the motions of blaming someone else (including the US, of course), because they know that the Iranian people are intensely furious with the leaders themselves. But the danger of blaming the military is obvious, if the military comes to see itself as endangered in general.
From the article [emphasis mine; also comments in brackets are mine]:
Several people have been detained in Iran over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane with a missile, the country’s judiciary says…
Mr Esmaili told a news conference in Tehran that the judiciary would “investigate the causes and direct impact of the incident”.
He added: “We will investigate the extent to which US warmongering caused this event. Several people have been detained and the investigation continues.”…
In a televised speech, President Rouhani said the judiciary would assemble a special court with a high-ranking judge and tens of experts to oversee the probe.
“This will not be a regular and usual case. The whole world will be watching this court,” he added.
Mr Rouhani also stressed that Wednesday’s “tragic event” should not be blamed on one individual.
“It’s not only the person who pulled the trigger, but also others who are responsible,” he said.
“Iranian armed forces admitting their mistake is a good first step [indication there will be a show trial plus public mea culpas, as well as military officers going along with the party line that they didn’t tell the leaders right away. And if they really didn’t tell them right away – which I doubt – it probably would be because they were terrified that exactly this would happen, as well as their execution and various punishments for their families],” he added. “We should assure people that it will not happen again.”
The president also said he wanted relevant officials to explain publicly why it took days for the authorities to disclose [see comment in brackets in paragraph above] that missiles were fired at flight PS752.
The Iranian government’s spokesman has denied that it was involved a cover-up, saying Mr Rouhani was not told what had happened until Friday evening.
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Aerospace Force said on Saturday that he had informed “officials” about the strike hours after the incident.
So there’s a bit of a contradiction there, although my guess is that the commander of the Aerospace Force will have his memory “refreshed” about that, until the discrepancy between the two stories disappears and he supports Rouhani’s version.
The Revolutionary Guards are the notorious IRGC:
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)…is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, founded after the Iranian Revolution on 22 April 1979 by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini…intended to protect the country’s Islamic republic political system. The Revolutionary Guards state that their role in protecting the Islamic system is preventing foreign interference as well as coups by the military or “deviant movements”.
Angering this group could cause them to become a lot more lax about such “deviant movements.”
More:
The Revolutionary Guards have roughly 125,000 military personnel including ground, aerospace and naval forces. Its naval forces are now the primary forces tasked with operational control of the Persian Gulf. It also controls the paramilitary Basij militia which has about 90,000 active personnel.
The Basij militia is the IRGC arm tasked with controlling the Iranian people:
Today the force consists of young Iranians who volunteer, often in exchange for official benefits. Basij serve as an auxiliary force engaged in activities such as internal security, enforcing state control over society,[9] law enforcement auxiliary, providing social services, organizing public religious ceremonies, policing morals, and suppression of dissident gatherings.
I’m not making any predictions. But it seems as though the leaders of Iran are treading on delicate ground if they make the IRGC the fall guys in order to protect themselves. Maybe the whole “trial” will develop mostly as a way to blame The Great Satan for all of it. But I don’t know that such an effort will be successful – except, of course, with the left of the US and western Europe.
Thats ok..
this will help
MY POl liCE stAte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlUQMH19BkQ
We tend to look at totalitarian states, and think they are monolithic. The in-fighting is hidden, but very real. In WWII, the Japanese army and navy did not cooperate well. It was more like they each were fighting their own war. Germany also had hidden conflicts that reduced their effectiveness.
We look at Iran, and think we see one thing, but the reality is much more complicated. You have the TV news guy resigning. You have demonstrators refusing to walk on American and Israeli flags. They are looking for scapegoats, no one ever volunteers for that job.
What we have today is the fog of war. The obvious one is the 40 year war with Iran, that some have just now noticed. The more important ones are our long war with China, and our current civil war. Each with its own fog bank.
When Iran gets nukes, and they will, what they choose to do with them is unknown. Will they use them to kill Israel, which triggers a Samson response that renders gulf oil radioactive for a thousand years? Or do they use them as a deterrent, as they continue a proxy war? Who knows?
What is it we don’t know? How can we learn what we don’t know? What is Truth? Who do you trust? Welcome to the fog bank.
I just want to note that a responsible government that was striking an enemy with ballistic missiles would have closed the airspace. While the military enforces violation in those cases, it is the civilian authority that clues airlines that they ought not to be flying. I’m pretty sure the reasonable Persian mind can figure that out.
One of the differences between Donald Trump and the U.S. political establishment is that Trump understands the U.S. has the biggest “unit” on the planet and he isn’t afraid to swing it around. He’s not obsessed with maintaining cordial relations or diplomatic niceties and is willing to apply blunt, naked pressure in situations where our foreign policy elites are to afraid of stepping on anyone’s toes.
Does this approach carry risks? Yep, and we might see the downside to it in a second Trump term. The downside to speaking softly and NEVER carrying a big stick, however, is to allow horrible oppression and injustice to continue to hold sway over tens of millions of innocent people.
Mike
Neo
Finally, I can see you start pointing to the big miss of the Iranian regime ugly face with its tool “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)”
People/countries and regional neighbours are suffering much form 1979 The Islamic Revolution till now.
After 2003 Iran had a freehand in the region in fact US invasion of Iraq open big doors for the lunatic regime to benefits from US invasion more than any regional countries in the ME.
Iran regime left loss so long that the lunatics think that they immune from punishment.
Sadly, Russia and China support the regime to degree that the regime pleased that have the support of the international community. Recent China, Russia and Iran hold joint naval drills in Gulf as an example.
Here, may I pick your attention for the Iranian regime for the last 16 years in Iraq they replicate their tools inside Iraq exactly like their tool “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)” but with different name and factions
Regional Implications: Iraq
Let see this report about what Iranians regime missiles have done to Al-Assad Military base inside Iraq and The latest on the US-Iran crisis
Iranian armed forces admitting their mistake is a good first step
When they say “armed forces” and when you say “the military” do you mean the IRGC or the regular army? Because it strikes me that they’re analogous to the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht, with I’m sure a similar set of rivalries and grudges.
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Aerospace Force said on Saturday that he had informed “officials”
This is what makes me think the blame is falling on the IRGC, and therefore what we’re seeing here is a power play by the civilian authorities (the mullahs) and maybe the regular military. If so, was the IRGC getting too big for its britches and was the death of
HimmlerSuleimani the moment of institutional weakness that enabled the move?I think the real turning point is not if the IRGC fails to turn its guns against the people, but if the army turns its guns against the IRGC.
Bryan Lovely on January 14, 2020 at 4:42 pm said:
This is what makes me think the blame is falling on the IRGC
Very precise conclusion.
Wikipedia
Is this Iran’s ‘Chernobyl’ moment?
Re blame — The latest:
Bottom line, what is going on inside Iran is unknownable at the present time.
Ann on January 14, 2020 at 6:12 pm said:
Re blame — The latest:
Iran says it has arrested the person who filmed the footage showing a Ukrainian passenger plane being shot down by a missile. It is believed the person being detained will face charges related to national security.
* * *
It was all the fault of another video guy — something has to be done about those fiends!
Isn’t it time for a headline in the Babylon Bee, “Canada, Ukraine declare war on Iran?”
Actually, now that I think about it. . .