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Subject: Iran Unmasks The Hydra
SYSOP    10/29/2014 5:48:32 AM
 
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keffler25       10/29/2014 10:02:59 AM
Human beings being almost uniform in their characteristics to a surprising degree, (even culturally) tend to adopt similar measures in their 'political organizations'. 
 
Police states sprout alphabet agencies to compete with each other and mutually ineffectively interfere with each other. These police states do NOT have to be totalitarian in their intent or flavor. (Example US.)   
 
So when one looks at a situation, one must examine what a police state's security agencies objectively do.
 
Does that police state operate offensive intelligence agencies that seeks to directly dominate and direct the internal affairs of foreign states?
 
By that criterion, the Iranians are no more guilty than Americans. You may not like their internal politics, but Iran's Quds and their Iranian compeers do what they do for the Iranian state, what the CIA does for America. These guys are not technically deranged psychotic superstitious maniacs out on a mission from god. The Iranian organizations (at least their leadership) will USE such whackjobs (Hezbollah) but to equate them with such whackjobs  is not accurate.     
 
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trenchsol       10/29/2014 9:28:33 PM
I have written couple of articles stating that Iranian regular Armed Forces are mostly apolitical and dedicated to defending of homeland rather than engaging outside Iranian borders. Also, allegedly, there were some tensions between military and religious state authorities about Green Movement. Allegedly, military refused to side with government and against Green Movement. It looks like military is not 'revolutionary' enough, so IRGC is there to make it up for that.
 
If that is true, then Iranian capability of projecting force is limited. That makes clandestine work more important, and developing all those agencies and services, creating and training militias on foreign soil, etc. is expected and logical.
 
Whoever is interested in learning more about relations between Iranian regular military and political / religious leadership can try Google. Right choice of keywords yields plenty of results.
 
 
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HR    Trenchsol   10/30/2014 12:30:58 PM
"If that is true, then Iranian capability of projecting force is limited."   
 
Because of short distances to their neighbors, relative size and maritime choke points "limited" is enough.
 
Given relative size it would take very little for Iran to bully their smaller neighbors across the Gulf into hosting their patrol boats and allowing them to build bases and garrison them. Could block access to everything.
 
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