Tag: Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps

In Parliamentary Vote, Iranians Vented Their Rage With the Ruling Elite

Iranians have delivered a stinging rebuke to Iran’s ruling conservatives, an analysis of parliamentary election results shows, with millions of Iranians having boycotted the vote and a far-right faction making striking gains. Many well-known conservative lawmakers, including the current speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, saw their vote […]

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U.S. Strike Killed Afghans Recruited to Fight for Iran

It was a memorial for the “martyrs” killed when the U.S. struck military bases in Syria, according to Iranian state television. A small crowd sat in rows of folding chairs, men in the front and women in the back, at the main cemetery in Tehran, the Iranian capital, earlier this month. Children milled around and […]

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Israel Was Behind Attacks on Major Gas Pipelines in Iran, Officials Say

Israel carried out covert attacks on two major gas pipelines inside Iran this week, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people, according to two Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. The strikes represent a notable shift in the shadow war that Israel […]

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U.S. Strike in Baghdad Kills Iranian-Backed Militia Commander

A U.S. retaliatory strike in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday killed a senior leader of a militia that U.S. officials blame for recent attacks on American personnel, the Pentagon said, following up on President Biden’s promise that the response to a slew of attacks by Shiite militias would continue. The Pentagon said the man was […]

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U.S. Strikes Test Iran’s Will to Escalate

As Iran and the United States assessed the damage done by American airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, the initiative suddenly shifted to Tehran and its pending decision whether to respond or take the hit and de-escalate. The expectation in Washington and among its allies is that the Iranians will choose the latter course, seeing no […]

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U.S. Hits Back at Iran With Sanctions, Criminal Charges and Airstrikes

In the hours before the United States carried out strikes against Iran-backed militants on Friday, Washington hit Tehran with more familiar weapons: sanctions and criminal charges. The Biden administration sanctioned officers and officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s premier military force, for threatening the integrity of water utilities and for helping manufacture Iranian […]

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Iran Tries to Avoid War With U.S. After Stoking Mideast Conflicts

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting this week, deeply worried that the United States would retaliate after an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq killed three American soldiers and wounded more than 40 others in Jordan. The council, including the president, foreign minister, chiefs of the armed forces and two aides to the country’s […]

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How Biden May Respond to the Drone Strike That Killed Three U.S. Soldiers

Even before the drone strike that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan on Sunday, the Biden administration was planning for a moment just like this, debating how it might strike back in ways that would deter Iran’s proxy forces and send a message that Tehran would not miss. But the options range from the […]

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Iran’s Leaders Say They Don’t Want a War. Should We Believe Them?

The war in Gaza has now gone where many feared it would, expanding into conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea. With America’s repeated strikes against the Houthis in Yemen this month, fears of a larger regional conflagration are steadily growing. Present in each of those arenas is Iran — and the question […]

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Israeli Strike in Syria Kills Iranian Officials and U.S. Troops Injured in Iraq

Iran accused Israel of launching an airstrike on the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Saturday that killed senior Iranian military figures, the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on officials from Iran and two of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran vowed to retaliate, raising fears of even deeper regional turmoil rippling out from the […]

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Iran’s Missile Capability Is Forcing the West to Weigh a Response

When Iran launched a barrage of airstrikes this week into Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, it was not just showing off the reach and sophistication of some of its newest missiles but also staking a claim: This is a new era in which Iran can flex its muscles at will and, as an added benefit, bolster […]

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Deadly Iranian Strike in Northern Iraq Inflames Tensions in the Region

A deadly Iranian ballistic missile strike in northern Iraq on Tuesday drove a wedge — at least temporarily — between Baghdad and Tehran, adding to the already volatile and tense situation in the Middle East. The Iraqi government recalled its ambassador to Tehran and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad to the Foreign Ministry after […]

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Iran Hits Iraq and Syria With Missiles, Citing Terrorist Attack

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched a missile attack against what they called “anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in a northern Iraqi city, setting off large explosions and sirens, including at the American Consulate, around midnight on Tuesday. The strike in the city of Erbil killed at least four civilians, according to the Kurdistan Regional Security Council in Iraq, […]

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Terrorism in Iran Exposes a Vulnerability It Doesn’t Want to Admit

For years Iran justified its military presence in Iraq and Syria, to its own people and the world, as a strategy for keeping terrorist groups at bay. Iranian officials frequently boasted that fighting terrorists directly or through proxy militias in the region meant they didn’t have to fight them at home. That sense of security […]

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Israel, Citing Hezbollah Rocket Strikes, Warns of War in Lebanon

As Israel pounded targets in the Gaza Strip from the air and sea on Wednesday, a member of the country’s war cabinet threatened action on a second front, along the border with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has fired rocket barrages into Israel. “I say to our friends around the world: The situation in […]

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Iran Accuses Israel of Killing Sayyed Mousavi, a Military Official

Iran accused Israel on Monday of killing a high-level military figure in a missile strike in Syria at a time when concerns are growing that the war in Gaza could escalate into a regional conflict. The assassinated Iranian was identified as Brig. Gen. Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior adviser to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. […]

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Houthi Militia in Yemen Presents a Special Challenge for U.S.

When Iranian-backed militias repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq this fall, the Biden administration struck back with force. Action was needed, officials said, to deter the groups from turning Israel’s conflict with Hamas into a wider war. But the United States has not yet retaliated against one Iranian-backed group: the Houthis of Yemen. […]

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A Viral Dance and ‘Happiness Campaign’ Frustrates Iran’s Clerics

A new form of protest against the government is rocking Iran: a viral dance craze set to an upbeat folk song where crowds clap and chant the rhythmic chorus, ‘oh, oh, oh, oh.’ In cities across Iran men and women of all ages are gyrating their hips, swirling their arms in the air, and chanting […]

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Once, This Was Iraqi Farmland. Now It’s Controlled by an Iran-Linked Militia.

Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green, with lush date palm groves bordering the Euphrates River. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission. A farmer, Ali Hussein, who once lived on that land, said, “We do not dare […]

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Iran Faces a Dilemma in the Israel-Hamas War

For more than four decades, Iran’s rulers have pledged to destroy Israel. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rarely appears in public without wearing a black-and-white checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh. Iranian military commanders gloat over training and arming groups across the region that are enemies of Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas. And when Hamas conducted the […]

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U.S. Airstrikes Contain Twin Messages to Iran, American Officials Say

The American strikes on two Iranian military munitions stockpiles in Syria on Friday were carefully designed, President Biden’s aides said, to send two distinct messages to Tehran. The first was that if the attacks on American forces by Iranian proxies escalate, it would force the United States into the kind of overt military confrontation with […]

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Hamas Attack on Israel Brings New Scrutiny of Group’s Ties to Iran

Last weekend’s attack on Israel by Hamas has brought renewed scrutiny of the armed Palestinian group’s longstanding relationship with Iran, and questions about whether the Gaza-based group could have pulled off such a sophisticated and devastating operation on its own. Iran has a long history of training and arming proxy militia groups in the region, […]

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Iraq’s Prime Minister Seeks Aid From United Nations

When Iraq’s prime minister addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, he is hoping to persuade the world that he is the leader who can finally solve his country’s persistent problems of corruption and political instability — and make it a reliable partner for the region. He asserts that as the […]

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