Iran: A careful look before a US leap

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The IRGC (Pasdaran-e Inqilab)
The Revolutionary Guards' "Special Services" or Department of Security and Foreign Intelligence provides funds and arms to Islamic groups around the world. It provides support for both the Hezbollah and Hamas movements. Importantly, it also is in overall control of the al-Quds (Jerusalem) groups. Al-Quds has reportedly some 50,000 highly motivated fighters, including some 12,000 or more Arabic-speaking Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Lebanese Shi'ites and North Africans trained in Iran or during the Afghan wars.

Al-Quds may prove to be the most significant of Iran's possible military options for retaliation. It has helped Hezbollah establish armed groups in Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Somalia, Sudan and Palestine and Islamic Jihad militants in Egypt, Turkey, Chechnya, Kosovo and many other Muslim countries and regions.
Al-Quds is in effect the long arm of the Islamic Revolution abroad. To Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, it "is the hand-picked elite of an already elite ideological army".

Some observers believe it is also behind the creation of large numbers of deep-cover terrorist cell networks in Europe and North America, and in pro-Western countries. It is these cells that will prove almost impossible for Western security services to identify and destroy; it is these cells that could cause immense structural damage to highly industrialized economies.

Not just terrorism
The danger to the United States and Europe extends well beyond the threat posed by Tehran's terrorist networks. As one expert observer pointed out, "Iran now exercises tremendous economic and political influence through its oil production, its control of the Persian Gulf's strategic Strait of Hormuz, and its growing influence in OPEC [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries], the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Economic Cooperation Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the World Islamic Council."

The source of Iran's growing influence, oil and gas, is likely to remain firmly off any future US target list. The consequences for worldwide economic stability caused by the loss of Iran's energy production could be staggering.