Revolutionary Guard

Iran's military this week is showing off its defensive capabilities, including what it described as new air defenses, amid renewed talk of airstrikes on Iran's nuclear sites. Iranian military authorities said they activated radar and signal detection installations along the mountainous nation's 4,200 miles of borders; put army, Revolutionary Guard and Basiji militia forces on alert; and launched a six-plane mock military raid by the fictional "orange forces" likely meant to mimic an Israeli or United States airstrike on its nuclear facilities.

The European Union slapped new sanctions on Iranian individuals, companies and organizations Thursday in response to a report alleging that Tehran had pressed ahead with ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. European governments also kept up their condemnation of the ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday by an angry mob of protesters. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have temporarily recalled their ambassadors from Tehran in solidarity with Britain, which shut down its embassy Wednesday and gave Iranian diplomats in London 48 hours to leave the country.

A deal between beleaguered Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponents has given control of Iran's crucial Oil Ministry to a commander of the Revolutionary Guard who is under international sanctions, according to analysts and a former industry official in Tehran. Ahmadinejad, his rivals in parliament and leaders of the Revolutionary Guard put aside months of differences this week and appointed four new Cabinet members, including the controversial Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghassemi as overseer of the country's vast oil and natural gas riches.

Iranian media are raising questions about the reported suicide in a Dubai, United Arab Emirates, hotel room of the son of a prominent Iranian politician and former Revolutionary Guard commander. The body of Ahmed Rezai was found Saturday in his hotel suite, according to news reports. He was the son of Mohsen Rezai, secretary-general of Iran's influential Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The elder Rezai ran unsuccessfully as a conservative challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009's disputed election.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has quietly become one of the most significant political and economic powers in the Islamic Republic, with ties to more than 100 companies, which by some estimates control more than $12 billion in business and construction, economists and Iranian political analysts say. The Guard was created in 1979 as a military and intelligence force to protect the ideals of Iran's Islamic Revolution.

The Bush administration plans to announce an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the designation of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials. The sanctions, to be announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., mark the first time that the U.S.

President Bush isn't the only one shaking his fist at Iran these days. Getting tough with Tehran is an increasingly popular bipartisan sport in Washington. Both the House and Senate have called on the administration to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Although those congressional resolutions lack the force of law, critics, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), worry that they could be construed by the White House as legal justification for U.S.

An explosion at a munitions depot at a Revolutionary Guard base in southwestern Iran on Tuesday killed at least 12 people, an Iranian news report said. The news website mashreghnews.ir, which is close to the Iranian government, reported that at least 20 people were injured in the explosion. The report cited no sources, and Iranian officials did not disclose the ranks of those killed or the exact casualty figures, which they said would be released Wednesday. Iranian officials told official and semiofficial news organizations that the explosion was an accident caused by a fire at the Imam Ali training base outside the town of Khorramabad that reached a weapons storage facility.

Tightened international sanctions meant to punish Iran for its nuclear program may be strengthening the country's hard-line elite, as blacklisted firms linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard manage to circumvent and even profit from the embargo. Businesspeople, officials and analysts inside and outside the Islamic Republic describe the sanctions as taking a toll on the economy and ordinary citizens, increasing the cost of everything from the production of medicine to the manufacture of baguettes.

Bluntly warning that Iran is sliding into military dictatorship, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience in Qatar on Monday that economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic should be increasingly aimed at its elite Revolutionary Guard. Clinton, who was in Doha, the capital, for a conference on relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, appeared to suggest that such a strategy could help rein in the ideologically motivated branch of the Iranian military by widening rifts within Iran's domestic political establishment.

Though initially skeptical that top Iranian regime figures were behind a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, U.S. government officials became convinced by the operation's money trail and now consider it likely that Iran's supreme leader was aware of the plan. "This is the kind of operation -- the assassination of a diplomat on foreign soil -- that would have been vetted at the highest levels of the Iranian government," said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive analyses.

An elaborate Iranian-backed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States was disrupted by FBI and DEA agents, officials said Tuesday. Members of an elite Iranian security force planned to detonate a bomb at a busy Washington restaurant, killing Adel Al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. and possibly over 100 bystanders, according to documents filed in New York federal court. The State Department has listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984.

The European Union accused an elite branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard of giving supplies and other support to Syria to help crush a popular uprising against President Bashar Assad's autocratic government. The EU banned European travel by the Quds Force, as well as by 15 Syrian officials and four branches of Syria's intelligence services, and froze their assets in sanctions adopted Tuesday and made public Wednesday. The Quds Force "has provided technical assistance, equipment and support to the Syrian security services to repress civilian protest movements," the EU alleged.

A deal between beleaguered Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponents has given control of Iran's crucial Oil Ministry to a commander of the Revolutionary Guard who is under international sanctions, according to analysts and a former industry official in Tehran. Ahmadinejad, his rivals in parliament and leaders of the Revolutionary Guard put aside months of differences this week and appointed four new Cabinet members, including the controversial Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghassemi as overseer of the country's vast oil and natural gas riches.

In another blow to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a controversial deputy foreign minister allied with Ahmadinejad's increasingly embattled and isolated clique resigned Tuesday under pressure from hard-liners who threatened to impeach the country's top diplomat over the appointment. Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh — an ally of both Ahmadinejad and his closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei — resigned from his post as deputy foreign minister for administrative and financial affairs after drawing fire over allegations of criminal activity.

Syrian security forces appear to be shifting their strategy for crushing the popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad to a less bloody approach similar to that used effectively by its main ally, Iran, to end massive 2009 street protests. In recent days, Assad loyalists have curbed their use of live fire, which has left hundreds of Syrian civilians dead and many more friends, relatives and neighbors willing to avenge them. Instead, security forces are increasingly using nonlethal means such as tear gas, truncheons and waves of random and targeted arrests, just as Iranian authorities did to rein in the protests that followed the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Obama administration Wednesday sanctioned eight senior Iranian officials for alleged human rights violations as it sought to increase pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime while reaching out to his opponents in Iran. The eight ? who include the head of the Revolutionary Guard, top security officials and prosecutors ? are responsible for a number of abuses since the disputed presidential election of 2009, U.S. officials said. "On these officials' watch, or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed and killed," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in announcing the sanctions.

The European Union slapped new sanctions on Iranian individuals, companies and organizations Thursday in response to a report alleging that Tehran had pressed ahead with ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. European governments also kept up their condemnation of the ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday by an angry mob of protesters. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have temporarily recalled their ambassadors from Tehran in solidarity with Britain, which shut down its embassy Wednesday and gave Iranian diplomats in London 48 hours to leave the country.

Electronic surveillance of officials at the highest levels of political power lies at the heart of a rift between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a source close to Tehran's conservative leadership told The Times. Intense mistrust of Ahmadinejad's closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, put him in the sights of the nation's spy services, the source said, triggering a sequence of events that has humiliated and weakened Ahmadinejad after Khamenei reversed a presidential decision to fire the nation's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi.

Suicide bombers killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens more Wednesday while targeting a procession of worshipers observing an important Shiite Muslim holiday in southeastern Iran, state media reported. The Jundallah organization, a militant Sunni group that claims to represent Iran's mostly Sunni ethnic Baluch minority, posted on a website that it was responsible for the attack. The bombing was the latest sign that the troubles in South Asia, including Sunni extremism, are increasingly seeping into Iran.