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July 30, 2010

Planet Iran Editorial

In recent days, Mohammad-Ali Jafari, Chief Commander of the Revolutionary Guards has for the first time admitted to the support of a number of their agents’ support for the leaders of the opposition movement. Speaking at the launch of the first series of the Defense Readiness Program Trainers, on Saturday, July 22nd, Jarari was asked about the reasons why the dissident guards who support ‘the leaders of sedition,’ have not be dealt with. He replied: “They have been convinced that their actions were wrong and that their acceptance would be preferable to any physical confrontation and ultimate elimination.”

Mohsen Rahseed

Mohsen Rasheed, former head of the Revolutionary Guards Center for War Studies and Mohammad Ezlati-Moghaddam, head of the Conservative members of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s campaign are among those known IRGC members who supported Mousavi. Eslati-Moghaddam was imprisoned subsequent to the June 2009 fraudulent election. Also before and after the elections, various Revolutionary Guard commanders such as Hemmat, Baakeri and Zeinaddin issued statements endorsing Mousavi.

Mojtaba Khamenei (in blue), with his father (in pink) on a trip in 2008.

Consequently a team was put together and headed up by Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader’s second of four sons, who is known to have been one of Ahmadinejad’s leading backers since before his 2005 ascent to presidency. The team was comprised of Admiral Hossein Firooz-Abadi (Commander of the Joint Armed Forces), Commander Mohammad-Reza Naghdi (Head of the Basij militia) and Hojjatoleslam Commander Hossein Taa’eb (Deputy Director of the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence). During several covert meetings the decision was made to forcibly retire the Revolutionary Guards who had openly voted for Mousavi and who had not supported the violent actions taken against protesters. Ultimately, 250 of the Revolutionary Guards were chosen to be retired. Among the retirees are a number of commanders with over eight years of service during the Iran-Iraq war and who held the highest positions. Commanders Hossein Alaavi, Hossein Dehghaan, Mostafa Ajorloo and Morteza Ghorbani are among those who have been retired.

It is now evident that those members of the Revolutionary Guards whose political views no longer accommodated the Iranian regime’s violent policies and who openly supported Mousavi could not be physically confronted or eliminated, per Jafari’s own remark. Despite all this however, reports indicate that the dissenting guards who were subjected to the “Discernment Agenda”, a program carried out by the Iranian regime’s guidance and training counselors and who refused to recapitulate to the norms of the guards’ ideology, have been ordered to retire in order to stymie an open breach within the ranks of the IRGC.