The Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is having a new commander and he is very clear on the future action of his unit.

Brigadier-General Esmail Ghaani, appointed as force commander by Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on January 3, said at a special ceremony in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on January 20, that his force would follow in Soleimani’s footsteps.

“Iran will powerfully continue Lieutenant General Soleimani’s path,” Ghaani, 62, said. “Resistance is the only way to defeat enemies.”

Strong blow

Soleimani was killed on January 3 in an American drone attack as he drove out of Baghdad International Airport.

His killing, the US administration said, came in response to his involvement in the killing of American citizens.

Nonetheless, Soleimani’s assassination was part of a new wave of US measures against the Islamic Republic, within a showdown aiming at clipping its regional nails.

Soleimani was by far the most prominent Iranian military commander and a close associate of the Iranian supreme leader. His killing left a bitter taste in the mouths of Iran’s top military commanders.

Powerful tool

Founded in 1980, the Quds Force is Iran’s long arm in the region. It sends its officers to train the members of militias affiliated to Iran in regional states.’

The force also has multiple training centers in different parts of Iran.

The Islamic Republic now moves the strings in several regional states, including in Syria; Iraq; Lebanon, and Yemen, and the Quds Force is its tool in this regard.

Expected course

Expectations are high that the Quds Force will work in the coming days to prove that Soleimani’s killing has not weakened it, but made it stronger.

Ghaani called for standing strong against Iran’s enemies.

“All threats can be turned into opportunities if we fulfil our duties,” he said.

This opens, however, the door wide for speculation on what the force is up to in the coming days.

This is particularly true after the Revolutionary Guard Corps said on January 20 that it would target three Arab states in the coming period.

Alarm

Such a threat is probably ringing the alarm in Arab capitals now, especially in the Gulf region, which falls within the range of easy targets for Iran.

Attacks were staged against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in mid-September last year, giving the Arab Gulf rivals of the Islamic Republic an insight into what it can do.

The attacks negatively affected production from the facilities, which are run by Saudi oil giant, Aramco, and threatened world oil supplies.

Fears of Iranian reprisals, following Soleimani’s death, were probably behind Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad’s hasty visit to Tehran on January 12.

Qatar is home to the largest US military base in the Gulf region. Al-Udeid Air Base houses thousands of American troops. The drone that targeted Soleimani’s convoy on January 3 is believed to have taken off from this base.

The same fears are driving security action in the Gulf region and the Red Sea, especially off the coast of Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait which is within the reach of the Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen.

Soon after Iran struck the US military base in Iraq with ballistic missiles on January 8, Khamenei said that such military actions are not enough.

The US forces, he said, have to leave the region altogether.

“The issue of revenge is another issue. They were slapped last night which is another issue. Such military actions will not be enough. The United States’ corruptive presence in the region must come to an end. They have brought war, sedition, destruction, and also the destruction of infrastructures to the region,” the Iranian supreme leader said.

The ultimatums of the new commander of the Quds Force up the ante in the region and add to speculation on where Iran can hit next.

L'articolo Quds Force Vowing to Follow In Soleimani’s Footsteps proviene da InsideOver.

In Iran, attention is now shifting onto elections being held in February as all 290 parliamentary seats are being contested. The standoff between the US and the Islamic Republic is likely to influence voting intentions, and whatever the result, it will determine the future direction of US-Iranian relations.

President Hassan Rouhani’s landmark achievement was the 2015 Iran Deal he signed with former US President Barack Obama, but since Donald Trump scrapped the agreement, America’s campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ has led to anger at the establishment among many citizens.

The mid-November protests, which resulted in hundreds of demonstrators being killed by security forces, showed that this event drastically changed the attitude of many politicians and people towards elections in their country. Radio Farda reported that on December 8th, a pro-reform website called Asr Iran ran an opinion poll asking voters which candidates they are likely to vote for. Over 63 percent of the 24,000 people who participated in the poll ticked ‘none of the above’, which was their way of saying they will not vote at all.

Some reformist politicians like Mostafa Tajzadeh and Abbas Abdi insist that there is no way out of Iran’s ongoing problems other than resorting to ballot boxes. But it is hard to make this argument to people when they perceive Rouhani as a liar.

During the 2017 presidential election, the current President said if Iranians re-elected him, every single sanction that has been imposed on their country by the US will be lifted. Since then, the opposite has happened.

Furthermore, the reformists are losing celebrity support. A former football player called Ali Karimi and Reza Sadeghi, a famous singer, both wrote on social media that they regret supporting Rouhani two years ago. If Trump wanted his sanctions to decrease support for Iran’s government, he has succeeded in achieving his aim.

However, if ultra-conservatives, or principlists, perform well in February’s poll, the stalemate between Tehran and Washington is only likely to intensify. Those who fundamentally oppose Trump’s policy of lifting sanctions in favour of reducing Iran’s nuclear weapons are finding that their position is being strengthened. Jalal Mirzaei told an OPEC meeting that Trump becoming US President has weakened the reformists.

But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said US sanctions had been ‘incredibly effective’, so there is no chance of the Trump administration shifting its current stance any time soon.

Some of the principlists’ most notable candidates include a former military officer and an ex-mayor of Tehran named Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf; Vahid Yaminpour, a TV personality; and legal scholar Hamid Rasaei. If they win February’s election, then a lurch to the right risks emboldening the security services’ proxy forces in Yemen and Syria, raising the chances of a confrontation with the US.

Oil Minister Bijn Namdar Zanganeh, one of Rouhani’s closest allies, is being targeted by the ultra-conservatives for impeachment since a US ban on critical oil exports tipped the country into recession. This could cause the government to be overwhelmed by interrogations and weaken the Iranian President at a time when he is attempting to repair US-Iranian relations.

Mohammadali Abtahi, a reformist cleric jailed in 2009, told Shargh newspaper that ‘unpopular conservatives would only emerge as victorious if turnout is low.’ This is because hardliners traditionally vote under instruction from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Another factor going against the reformists is that Iran’s Guardian Council disqualified almost 3,000 of their candidates. Only 30 have been approved. Therefore, it will be harder for the reformists to contest all the 290 seats on offer.

Trump would do well to engage with Rouhani before February’s poll. Unfortunately, the US President’s actions are only likely to increase support for those who are principally opposed to American intervention at all, and that will make it harder for the Trump administration to reach an accord with Iran.

L'articolo What Impact Could Parliamentary Elections Have on US-Iranian Relations? proviene da InsideOver.