Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Marked As Terrorists

After President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran delivered a controversial speech at Columbia University and addressed the United Nations, the U.S. Senate voted for the Bush Administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Fox News: “It is the Sense of the Senate … that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.” Some democrats (most notably Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.) claim the proposal, passed by the senate with a 76-22 vote, is a mechanism for the Bush administration to use force against Iran under the auspices of Senate approval. Overall, the legislative branch seems to be roughly on the same page considering a Senate majority backed today’s proposal in conjunction with a House bill passed yesterday, on a 397-16 vote, demanding greater economic sanctions against Iran. In his UN address, President Ahmadinejad denounced any efforts to shut down uranium enrichment for an Iranian nuclear energy program, claiming the "case as closed." Many Americans hoped the Iranian president would bring more to the table, thus enabling a deescalation of tensions between the two countries. The U.S. has UN Security Council backing, urging Iran to halt its nuclear energy program. Many believe the next six months will prove crucial to U.S.-Iran relations, depending greatly on whether Ahmadinejad and Iran will begin to comply with UN demands, which they have, to date, avoided doing. But the larger story outside of sanctions and speeches lies in the press and the people. If we may revert back to pre-Iraq engagements, the press played an enormous part in revving up popular support for invading Iraq. The Bush administration no doubt planted its seeds in the process of public approval, yet the press admittedly played down its guard dog role, covering events largely one-sided. One cannot help to question if we are making the same mistake again today with Iran. Even more alarming are the whisperings of the emergence of Project Checkmate, a strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions are on the rise with Iran. Strategies forming within the group are based on a need to avoid an “Iraq” situation if we were to go to war. It is interesting a group has not formed to strategize ways of avoiding war if Iran fails to shut down its nuclear energy program. Here at PCR we do not aim to take sides, but for the sake of sidestepping a possibly catastrophic situation of taking up arms with Iran, we caution every reader to learn both sides of the debate before taking news at face value.