Source: U.S.News & World Report
The Bush administration is investigating the wide web of business connections undertaken by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and is urging European and other countries to be on the lookout for concealed IRGC links to Iranian companies, a senior U.S. official tells U.S. News.
"We want to expose what the Revolutionary Guard is and what they’re doing," says the official. "The economic part [of the guard] is huge and growing." The guard is an elite, 125,000-man force assigned to protect Iran’s Islamic revolution. It maintains air, land, sea, intelligence, domestic patrol, and foreign operations units, the last of which is said to be deeply involved in funding, training, and supplying anti-U.S. Shiite militants in Iraq.
U.S. officials also believe the guard is involved in running a covert military dimension to Iran’s nuclear programs, supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank and Gaza, and serving as a hard-line pillar of the Iranian government.
Deciphering the guard’s economic activities is a difficult process, the official said, adding, "It’s hard to tease out what’s going where and what’s the money supporting." A key goal of exploring the guard’s activities is to be able to warn European and other countries about inadvertent business dealings with the guard, part of the administration’s strategy of squeezing the Iranian regime’s revenue streams and access to financing.
U.S. officials are cautioning others that "there’s a good chance the hidden hand behind it [business deals with Iran] is the Revolutionary Guard," says the official. "There is an education component to this."