The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) of Greater Tehran Mohammad Reza Yazdi, announced the formation of a special coronavirus-related unit called “Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil.”
The unit will deal with people who are inattentive to observing health protocols in public places, said Brigadier General Yazdi, who commands the Tehran province’s IRGC forces. Tehran
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Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Hossein Salami said that the IRGC will provide coronavirus patients and medical staff with all its possibilities and capacities to fight against the disease.
“Upon the order issued by the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei), we are committed to bringing to the field all IRGC’s treatment capacities and possibilities, including fixed and mobile hospitals as well as possibilities to produce and distribute masks and hygiene packages, cooperate in screening and assist the devoted medical staff by the medical society’s Basij (volunteers),” General Salami said, addressing the IRGC and Basij commanders in a video conference on Tuesday.
He added that the decision was made after Ayatollah Khamenei entrusted the Armed Forces, including the IRGC, with a new mission to cooperate with the medical staff with all their power in the area of coronavirus prevention and treatment.
General Salami said that besides these measures, the IRGC and Basij forces continue gathering and distributing public aid packages among the poor people.
The Iranian health ministry announced on Tuesday that 4,108 new cases of coronavirus infection have been identified across the country during the past 24 hours, adding that 254 patients have passed away during the same period.
“4,108 new patients infected with COVID-19 have been identified in the country based on confirmed diagnosis criteria during the past 24 hours,” Iranian Health Ministry Spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Tuesday, and added, “1,946 patients have been hospitalized during the same time span.”
She added that the total number of COVID-19 patients has increased to 508,389.
“Unfortunately, 254 patients have lost their lives in the past 24 hours, increasing the number of the dead to 29,070,” the spokeswoman noted.
Lari expressed satisfaction that 411,840 coronavirus patients have recovered or been discharged from hospitals so far.
Also Read: Hossein Dehghan Could Win Iran’s Presidency For The Revolutionary Guards
In 2001, then-Defense Minister of Iran Ali Shamkhani decided to run for the presidency.
He launched a longshot bid, having never run for elected office, and faced off against his boss at the time, President Mohammad Khatami.
Shamkhani, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and Artesh, or Islamic Republic of Iran Army, naval commander, justified his candidacy by arguing it was time for a “military man” to ascend to the presidency, and that he had the “authority to take action instead of mouthing slogans.”
He lost that race, but that campaign illustrates the intrigue surrounding the decision of another military man and his former deputy, Hossein Dehghan, to run for the presidency exactly twenty years later, in 2021.
Dehghan has two qualities that have fueled his rise and make him an important presidential contender: skill in navigating Iran’s ideological spectrum and credentials spanning Iran’s armed, deep, and elected states.
Who is Hossein Dehghan?
Born in Isfahan in 1957, Dehghan was involved in some of the most consequential episodes in Iran’s fraught relationship with the United States.
He played a role in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Dehghan was also the commander of the IRGC forces in Lebanon and Syria in 1983, which coincided with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. service personnel—a fact the U.S. government highlighted when it sanctioned him in 2019.
Dehghan had been on the U.S. radar in the 1980s. According to testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1985 by Nathan Adams, then an investigative reporter for Reader’s Digest, Dehghan coordinated “personnel, indoctrination, and training” of Hezbollah.
Adams also revealed that Dehghan’s “dual control [was] the Islamic Republic’s embassies in Beirut and Damascus.”
Dehghan therefore likely liaised with Iran’s then-Ambassador to Syria Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, who directed attacks against U.S. interests in Lebanon during this timeframe.
Also Read: Using digital tools, the IRGC strengthens its grip on power in Iran
As tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to mount as Washington looks to further ratchet up pressure on Tehran, Iranian cyber activities have been in the spotlight in recent weeks.
U.S. authorities have cracked down on Iranian cyber actors as part of a wide-ranging campaign, going after everything from website defacement to intellectual property theft and imposing targeted sanctions.
Over the past decade, Iran has made a concerted push to expand its cyber capabilities, an effort in which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the branch of the Iranian military charged with safeguarding the 1979 revolution against internal and external threats, has played a central role.
The IRGC reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and acts as the eyes and ears of the ruling clergy throughout all corners of the country, spying both digitally and physically on its own citizens. Given the IRGC’s expansive and growing power, scholars, analysts, and many Iran watchers have long thought that at some point it could take over control in Iran, replacing the theocratic government with a military one.
As Iran approaches an inflection point over the issue of succession after Ayatollah Khamenei, that day could be coming soon, and the IRGC is well placed to bring about such a transition given the hybrid mix of physical and cyber capabilities that it has developed and perfected over recent decades.
Cracking down
The IRGC has played a key role in cracking down on protests and curbing dissent in Iran whenever they reach critical mass.
This was on clearest display during the 2009 Green Movement when the IRGC crushed the opposition to the contested electoral victory of former President Mohammad Ahmadinejad.
That same year also saw the introduction of two new trends.
Also Read: Many Israelis Ready To Spy For Iran, IRGC Commander Says
“Many people” in Israel have “a lot of motives” to cooperate with Tehran, said a top commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Reza Naghdi, on a TV show on Friday.
Naqdi expressed his claim nearly two years after a former Israeli minister was convicted of “espionage” for Iran.
Naqdi went even further by boasting that the clergy-dominated Iran was “closer to Israel” than “imagined” and that one day, it would “suddenly fall apart.”
In August 2019, the Islamic Republic Minister of Intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi, also claimed in a TV show that an Israeli cabinet member had been “under control” of his agents.
Alavi, a black-turbaned cleric, was referring to the case of Israel’s former Minister of Energy, Gonen Segev.
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