Iran Revolutionary Guards commanders huddle with President-elect

Iran Focus: London, Jul. 07 – In a meeting with Iran’s newly-elected ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) top brass pledged their allegiance to defend the Islamic Republic and the new man at the helm at a time when there
is growing international furore over his past involvement in terrorism and the assassination of dissidents abroad.
Iran Focus

London, Jul. 07 – In a meeting with Iran’s newly-elected ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) top brass pledged their allegiance to defend the Islamic Republic and the new man at the helm at a time when there is growing international furore over his past involvement in terrorism and the assassination of dissidents abroad.

In Ahmadinejad’s first post-election meeting with senior IRGC commanders, the President-elect met the Commandant General of the Revolutionary Guards, Major General Rahim Safavi; the Revolutionary Guards’ Second-in-Command Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr; and several other top commanders of the IRGC and the Bassij, a paramilitary branch of the Revolutionary Guards, set up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the early days of the Islamic Republic to serve as the shock troops for the new regime.

During the meeting Major General Safavi vowed to serve the new President with the full might of the IRGC and the Bassij.

The hard-line Revolutionary Guards Corps is the ideological army loyal to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and committed to “the export of Islamic revolution around the world”, according to its charter.

A day prior to the meeting, Safavi, in his congratulatory message to the new President, said, “It’s necessary to declare the readiness of the green-uniform Guards and capable Bassijis … to support and cooperate with Your Excellency’s serving government,”

Masoud Zabeti, a London-based analyst for Iran Focus, said, “The most radical and hard-line elements of the clerical regime are lining up behind Ahmadinejad at a time when he is under the international limelight for suspected involvement in the U.S. hostage crisis, his role in the assassinations of dissidents in Europe, and the execution of political prisoners in Iranian prisons during the 1980s”.

Ahmadinejad was himself a former top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and is seen to be devoutly loyal to the Supreme Leader, who is believed to have helped him to win what was widely believed to have been rigged elections.

“Over the years the Revolutionary Guards, who answer directly to Supreme Leader, have been the cornerstone of the Islamic Republic and fought domestic and foreign forces to maintain the current status quo. There has now been a consolidation of power by the Supreme Leader and he has put Ahmadinejad in the driver’s seat”, Zabeti said.

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