Con Coughlin 24/07/2008

Con Coughlin, (Daily Telegraph)

"For an organisation that prides itself on being a well-run administrative machine, the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards is having a rather testing time. It's not just last Saturday's mysterious explosion in a suburb of Tehran that killed 15 people that is causing the leadership sleepless nights, although the nationwide news black-out imposed immediately afterwards does suggest the Revolutionary Guards, the storm troops of Iran's Islamic Revolution, are rattled.

Details are only now starting to reach the outside world, and it looks increasingly like sabotage was responsible for devastating a military convoy as it travelled through Khavarshahar. The company responsible for moving the equipment, LTK, is owned by the Revolutionary Guards and is suspected of being involved in shipping arms to Lebanon's Hizbollah Shia Muslim militia, which is trained and funded by Tehran.

The Revolutionary Guards' arms shipments to Lebanon and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are usually shrouded in such secrecy that only a few senior members of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government are briefed in advance. As the international crisis over Iran's nuclear programme deepens, the Revolutionary Guards have intensified their efforts to supply regional allies with military hardware so that, in the event of Tehran becoming involved in an armed confrontation with the West, Iran can respond by opening a number of fronts in the Middle East and beyond.

The need to keep the arms build-up secret would explain the Revolutionary Guards' decision to ban the Iranian media from reporting the explosion, even though it was heard throughout the capital. But what really concerns Iran's leadership is that the incident is the latest in a long line of unexplained explosions."

For the full article click here

Back to top