“One of the lessons learned from the events of the past 12 months was that we cannot count on many of the establishment’s own who were blessed by [the clerical regime’s founder Ruhollah] Khomeini and senior officials because sometimes their hands might actually be joined with the enemy’s.”This is a clear expression of fear. The Guardian also has this report about a member of the IRGC that defected six months ago and is currently in Turkey named Muhammed Hussein Torkaman. He says that he wasn’t just any IRGC member, but was part of an internal unit called “Avengers of God” that managed the personal security of top leaders. He speaks in a film being made by Guardian Films about the opposition, saying that members of the IRGC have refused orders and have been imprisoned and “severly punished” as a result.
The film interviews four former IRGC members, all describing discontent inside the regime’s top security force.
According to Torkaman, the leadership was so worried that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had a plane on standby, ready to fly them to Syria. Khamenei is so paranoid, he says, that he has lost confidence in his own security team and has installed his own intelligence unit behind his office with bugging and surveillance equipment that allows his office to spy on their own spies. He is also rumoured to change his bodyguards daily because of a fear of assassination.However, Torkaman says that if the regime is in danger of being overthrown, the IRGC will defend the regime because their own welfare comes from the regime, even if they disagree with them. This is an interesting hypothesis, and I think there’s some validity, but I also think there are solutions to this. I’ll save that for another time.
Posted by Ryan Mauro at 6:05 pm
World Threats.com
