bdmetronews Desk ॥ The recent sabotage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility is just the latest setback for the country’s Revolutionary Guard, though the paramilitary force is rarely publicly criticized due to its power.
But with some of its leaders now considering vying for the presidency, the Guard’s influence and failures could become fair game.
In just over the last year, the Guard shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner, killing 176 people. Its forces failed to stop both an earlier attack at Iran’s Natanz facility and the assassination of a top scientist who started a military nuclear program decades earlier. Meanwhile, its floating base in the Red Sea off Yemen suffered an explosion.
Then on Sunday, the nuclear facility, of which the Guard is the chief protector, experienced a blackout that damaged some of its centrifuges. Israel is widely believed to have carried out the sabotage that caused the outage, though it has not claimed it. In the wake of the attack, Iran announced Tuesday it would begin enriching uranium at 60% purity, the highest level its program has ever reached.
No one in Iran has directly called out the Guard for these failures — and that isn’t surprising. The force created after its 1979 Islamic Revolution has an extensive intelligence apparatus rivaling those of Iran’s civilian government — and it is brutal in its clampdown on dissent. Former detainees at Tehran’s Evin prison describe the Guard as running an entire ward of the facility housing politically sensitive prisoners. Local journalists can face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment for their work.
Around the edges, however, criticism is beginning to leak out.
Eshaq Jahangiri, President Hassan Rouhani’s top vice president and a reformist, lamented that “nobody is ready to be responsible” for what happened at Natanz in remarks that appeared aimed at the Guard.
“Which body is responsible to identify and prevent the country’s enemies from doing something in the country? Has anyone ever been held accountable, or been held responsible or reprimanded, for what the biggest enemy of this country is doing here?” Jahangiri asked in a video shared widely on social media.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)
