Iran Focus
London, 17 Jul – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) represents a bigger terror threat than even ISIS according to high ranking people in the US Defence sector.
James Woolsey, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Peter Vincent Pry, chief of staff of the congressional EMP Commission and served on the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA, wrote an oop-ed for the Washington Post in which they discussed that the IRGC is a bigger terror threat than ISIS in terms of size, advanced weaponry, and state support.
They wrote: “[The IRGC] dwarfs ISIS by any measure. ISIS never had more than about 30,000 fighters, equipped mostly with small arms, with very little access to high-tech weaponry. In contrast, the IRGC has about 125,000 fighters. It is the only terror organisation in the world with an army, navy, and special forces.”
Indeed, the breakdown of the IRGC is:
• Army: 100,000 troops in 20 infantry divisions
• Navy: 20,000 sailors, including 5,000 Marines
• Special Forces (Quds Force): 5,000
And that number doesn’t even include the reserve forces of the paramilitary Basij Militia, whose number is normally around 90,000, but can mobilise up to 1 million fighters.
The IRGC should not be focused with Iran’s army, which is a separate entity. The IRGC was founded in 1979, after the Iranian Regime overthrew the Shah, as a counterpoint to the army, who the Regime did not fully trust. Their purpose: to stop “deviant” movements which the mullahs saw as a threat, serve as a “morality” police, and spread the Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East and the world.
Woolsey and Pry wrote: “The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is the instrument by which Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism — including against its own people.”
They explain that the IRGC has killed more Americans, in Iraq and Afghanistan than ISIS has, and more US allies through their support of terror cells like Hezbollah and Hamas. With ISIS on the brink of destruction, Woolsey and Pry argue that the IRGC must be next on the list for eradication.
Woolsey and Pry wrote: “When the smoke clears over Raqqa and ISIS is no more in Syria and Iraq, the IRGC will be there, and its proxies will be everywhere, casting a darker, more ominous shadow of terror over the world.”
They also wrote about the IRGC’s control of Iran’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon programs and how Iran is conspiring with North Korea on nuclear weapons, citing a U.S. Institute of Peace report, which reads: “The Islamic Republic is the only country to develop a 2,000-km missile without first having a nuclear weapons capability”.
