RIYADH (Reuters) – The United States believes Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are driving the country towards military dictatorship and should be targeted in any new UN sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday.
Speaking in Qatar before flying to Riyadh, Clinton denied the United States planned to attack Iran and said Washington wanted dialogue but could not “stand idly by” while Iran pursued a suspected nuclear weapons programme.
Asked if Washington planned to attack Iran, she replied: “No, we are planning to try to bring the world community together in applying pressure to Iran through sanctions adopted by the United Nations that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran.”
“That is how we see it. We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. That is our view,” she said, speaking to students in a televised session.
Clinton later told reporters in Riyadh that she hoped “this is not a permanent change but that instead the religious and political leaders of Iran act to take back the authority which they should be exercising on behalf of the people”.
The United States is leading a push for the UN Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran, which says its nuclear programme is to generate electricity so it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters that sanctions may work but that Iran’s Gulf neighbours hoped for a more “immediate resolution”.
“Sanctions are a long-term solution. They may work, we can’t judge. But we see the issue in the shorter term maybe because we are closer to the threat … So we need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution,” he said. In Moscow on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to back “sanctions with teeth” targeting Iran’s energy sector.
Clinton’s remarks were the most open assessment by a senior US official about what they regard as the growing influence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), an elite force whose influence has grown in recent years through a network of banks, shipping firms and other companies under its control.
The IRGC, set up after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution to protect the ruling system against internal and external threats, has 125,000 fighters with army, navy and air units. It operates separately from the 350,000-strong army and answers to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s top authority.
The IRGC is involved in construction and has expanded to cover areas such as import-export, oil and gas, defence, transport and infrastructure projects.
“I think the civilian leadership is either preoccupied with its internal domestic political situation or ceding ground to the Revolutionary Guard and that’s a deeply concerning development,” Clinton told reporters aboard her plane.
