Ineffectual, Not Tough

The proposal, flagged up by US State Department officials yesterday, to put Iran's revolutionary guard on a list of foreign terrorist organizations which includes al-Qaida, Hizbullah and Hamas is a confrontational one which could go down well in Washington. There is a temporary confluence of interests between the hawks and doves within the Bush administration, in their conflicted debate on Iran. The doves - secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and defence secretary Robert Gates - favor muscular sanctions but oppose a military strike, while the hawks, led by vice-president Dick Cheney, are convinced that only military action will end Tehran's nuclear dreams.

Both sides could use this proposal to advance their cause. It allows the doves to argue that more robust sanctions will lessen the need for military action, while the hawks can view this as a useful precursor to a strike by stylizing the revolutionary guard as a combatant in the "war on terror". There have even been rumors of a US air strike on bases used by the Quds wing of the guard, accused of providing explosives to Shia militias.

But where is the logic of this measure if the policy is to persuade Tehran to stop enriching uranium? Iran will only negotiate away its enrichment program if it is convinced that Washington is not seeking regime change. The revolutionary guard differs from al-Qaida, Hamas, or Hizbullah in one important respect: it is not only a state body, but forms the largest part of Iran's military.

If the US declares an arm of the Iranian state a terrorist organisation (and under the Bush doctrine, those who harbor terrorists are as guilty of terrorism as the terrorists themselves) what chance does Washington have of prising influential Iranian opinion away from the belief that the bomb is the best insurance policy against outside attack? Tougher sanctions could persuade saner voices like the supreme leader Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani, secretary of the national security council, to conclude that diplomatic pressure represents a clear danger to the system and that maintaining Iran's theocracy is more important than the bomb, or the capacity to make one. But as Iran has done little business with the US in the last two decades, the terrorist designation would not be a tough sanction, but a psychological and ultimately ineffectual one. It would be folly to believe it would have any effect on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. As the central government in Baghdad weakens, the influence of Iran on Shia militias does not necessarily grow. The Quds force is only one player out of many in a conflict that is descending into a civil war on the scale of the one that tore Lebanon apart.