Obama Offers Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a Kosher Certificate

US Secretary of State John Kerry Monday, May 4, denounced what he called “hysteria” over a final nuclear accord. “People really need to look at the facts,” he said, “and they need to look at the science behind those facts.”
However, what troubles Saudi Arabia, Israel and other Middle East nations more even than the final nuclear accord – which, like it or not, they are forced to come to terms with – is the whirlwind of activity spinning around the deal before it is even signed.
Take for example, an instruction, which President Barack Obama is revealed here by DEBKA Weekly’s exclusive intelligence and Washington sources, to have given Kerry and the US team facing Iran on a secret track. They were told to promote Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC or Pasdaran) as top candidate for sanctions relief.
Obama acted in advance of the direct track with the six world powers resuming next week.
He first reached a compromise with US Congress by promising not to block a toned-down bill that gives the lawmakers the power to review, but not veto, an international nuclear accord with Iran.
Now, he has also has acted secretly to win the Revolutionary Guards, the deal’s most adamant opponents.
The bait he offers is a kosher certificate to this violently extreme organization, its passport to exiting sanctions.

Al Qods and the Guards are inseparable entities

To keep this gesture under tight wraps – especially from Congress – the White House has gone to work with a bucket of whitewash – the same one used to paint Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as the moderate face of the radical Iranian regime.
The Guards are now being re-invented as fit for the US to do business with simply by slicing the Al Qods Brigades and their chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani away from the main body.
This sinister sponsor of terror is designated to remain under sanctions, while the IRGC as an organization wins a reprieve.
However, this surgical process can hardly be credited as anything other than utterly artificial, DEBKA Weekly’s counter terrorism sources stress.
Gen. Soleimani is totally subservient to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and operates under the direct orders of the Guards commander, Gen. Ali Jafary.
Al Qods Brigades get their funding and logistical resources for military and covert operations from the Revolutionary Guards.
They recruit members under a single, central mobilization program.
And so easing sanctions for the Guards would automatically benefit the Al Qods Brigades, an integral arm of the force.

The IRGC – an economic colossus

Furthermore, the very amputation attempt gives the Obama administration another quandary. It is Al Qods which actively manages and participates in the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, on Tehran’s behalf, s well as sponsoring the Lebanese Shiite Lebanese Hizballah. How can the US square subjecting Gen. Soleimani to sanctions, while at the same time secretly collaborating with him, as commander of the Shiite militias spearheading the war on the Islamic State in Iraq and other key Middle East conflicts?
It is also hard to see the White House extending favors to an aggressive Iranian organization which has grown to monstrous proportions. A state within a state, the IRGC runs its own independent, army, air force, navy, commando units and artillery. It controls Iran’s sea and air ports and has created a sprawling empire that has sucked up large segments of the Iranian economy.
The construction business is entirely under the thumb of Revolutionary Guards officers; so are oil, gas, imports and exports and telecommunications.

A profitable finger in every Mid East conflict

This giant, operating through a central outfit called Khatam al-Anbiya, runs more than 812 registered companies and holds nearly 2,000 government contracts for the building of military bases, facilities, defense lines, and telecommunications networks – not only for Iran and its armed forces and Shiite militias – but also in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the very countries where the Guards run Al Qods officers and agents for fomenting strife.
Khatam al-Anbiya aka IRGC has tentacles long enough to act as the subcontractor for the terror tunnels which Hizballah and Hamas are busy burrowing under Israel’s northern and southwestern borders. The builders work to plans and directives coming from Khatam al-Anbiya’s regional offices in Beirut and Gaza City.
And so every Middle East conflict lines the pockets of the Revolutionary Guards. The lifting of sanctions by Washington will further enrich this colossus and encourage it to further pursue its toxic activities.