To confront Iran, halt the IRGC's commerce

Last week the leading Iranian opposition group held a press conference in Westminster to highlight some aspects of the ever-growing commercial empire being maintained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the ways in which the paramilitary's wealth contributes to the ongoing operations of terrorist groups throughout the region.The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) specifically identified the sites of some 90 docks operated exclusively by the IRGC within Iranian ports. The information was obtained from the network of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which has assets within the clerical regime and the IRGC itself and made international headlines in 2002 when it revealed key details about the regime's nuclear program.

The NCRI pointed out that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei specifically ordered docks whose operations have been granted to the IRGC should be subject to no oversight. The notably hard line paramilitary organization has free rein to smuggle black market goods into the Islamic Republic and most disturbingly, to smuggle weapons, financial resources and personnel to spread the regime's influence into the wider regions of the Middle East, including Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain.

For those who have been following the activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran throughout its 38 years of existence, one should understand that both of these IRGC operations have a long history. The financial enrichment of the organization and the development of its status as the foremost supporter of terrorism in the Middle East and the world at large has now become very apparent. Naturally, these two trends feed into one another with increasing levels of wealth securing greater levels of domestic and international power for one of Iran's most hard line institutions.

The West has seemed reluctant to confront the IRGC's activities. They have targeted the IRGC for sanctions and have focused solely on its special foreign operations wing, the Quds Force. The main body of the IRGC has so far remained untouched. The logic behind this decision is the assumption that the IRGC's terrorist activities can be dealt with separately from its contributions to international smuggling and to human rights violations within the Islamic Republic.