Joseph Vranner joins me to talk about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its relationship with the regular armed forces, and how it s been targeted by the United States and Israel in recent weeks, and why it s a point of vulnerability.
00:05:56.720And then the second question follows from it.
00:05:59.920We don't really have an idea of how President Trump thinks this is going to end.
00:06:06.500And is it possible that he is thinking that at some point the military is going to finish the job and destroy the IRGC?0.53
00:06:16.680So what I would say is you're absolutely right.0.83
00:06:19.360The relationship from what I understand between the Revolutionary Guard and the regular military is very much that SS relationship to the German army.
00:06:29.540that same sort of relationship that the Roman legions had with the Praetorian Guard.
00:06:37.360So there's not a lot of love lost between the two organizations.
00:06:41.980And I think certainly that one of the options that the U.S. and Israel were hoping
00:06:46.600would be to see that the military would step up and take out the Revolutionary Guard Corps
00:06:52.480and the elements of the security apparatus that keep the government in power.
00:06:57.760I think they also thought there'd be a bigger rising in the streets.
00:07:01.580But, you know, there are a lot of questions around whether people have been armed to do that or not.
00:08:24.600you know, eliminating the Iranian nuclear capability, degrading their missile drone
00:08:31.360forces, their air force, their Navy, cutting them off from their proxies, and regime change.0.81
00:08:41.340And so these are very high objectives. The Iranian objective was simply to survive,0.82
00:08:50.900was to endure, to maintain the regime and as much of their strategic capabilities as they could.
00:08:58.720And so for Iran, they're fairly low-level goals as opposed to the U.S. and Israeli objectives in
00:09:06.880the war. I think that there is a strategy. I think that the strategy, if you look at the targeting
00:09:13.700and how the war has unfolded, there were very heavy hits early on on all the elements that the
00:09:20.140Iranians had to make war and their senior leadership. And they continued to pummel that
00:09:26.440leadership and nuclear scientists and others so that circumstances were ripe for regime change
00:09:35.600if the opposition on the ground or the army or some other element of society decided to rise up.
00:09:41.020and and when that didn't happen uh and ceasefire deal came uh or talks came they went to have a
00:09:50.260ceasefire talk um i think to let the pressure off internationally and uh kind of cool things
00:09:57.340hoping the iranians might come back to the table uh with with some real uh concrete um
00:10:04.420offers including getting rid of their nuclear program the iranians completely stonewalled that
00:10:10.560weren't interested and so now we have the united states shutting down uh traffic to iranian ports
00:10:18.880which is effectively strangling their economy and i fully expect that we'll see the iranians get
00:10:25.520pretty excited in the next few days uh as as their dollars dry up and and other commodities
00:10:32.400And keep in mind, their refining capacity, in a matter of 13 to 14 days, their storage facilities for their oil and gas and stuff is going to be a chalk block, and they're going to have to shut down their refining capability.
00:10:54.040means that their economy is going to tank and that's going to tank the money for the
00:10:59.200Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime, and that's going to tank money for their proxy
00:11:03.820militias and put a real crimp in the social life of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:11:09.440But meanwhile, I think it's fair to say that the Revolutionary Guard Corps would be the last
00:11:15.840people to feel the economic pinch. Everybody else will be starving, but they'll still have
00:11:20.620something so how do you actually bring those people literally to a close there's a lot of
00:11:30.680stories about the revolution guard corps sending you know economic assets out of the country
00:11:35.940sending their families out of the country to places like canada as a matter of fact
00:11:39.540doing different things to try and protect themselves and their interests when you fragment
00:11:46.840a regime and you fragment it at the top one of the things that you do is you make it very difficult
00:11:52.520for people to choose between their own personal interests and their economic interests and those
00:11:58.360of the regime and so by by hitting those revolutionary guard leaders in their pocket
00:12:04.360books remember the regime in their pocket books you start to see fractures in the regime and and
00:12:10.920And that leads to a situation where you might see regime change.
00:12:16.120I think, you know, there are already stories that the Speaker has more clout than, who
00:12:22.160is a former IRGC senior officer, than the President and the Foreign Minister.
00:12:28.920You saw in the negotiations a delegation of about 60 Revolutionary Guard Corps and military
00:12:35.420people showed up in in uh pakistan to try and get what they wanted through in the negotiations
00:12:43.580you're seeing uh the irgc head tell the speaker uh that you know you shook hands with the americans
00:12:51.260and and our supreme leader is not even buried yet so those cracks in the regime are starting
00:12:56.380to occur and life is starting to get very difficult for people any idea how many irgc
00:13:03.580members have their families safely hidden away in canada well there's supposed to be at least a
00:13:09.900thousand irgc in canada and there's supposed to be a large number of of of elites that have have
00:13:17.020come here and that's only through what you see in in open source reporting i would guess uh you're
00:13:24.540seeing similar things in the united states uh you know they've just re removed a couple senior uh
00:13:31.260family members of former irgc leaders and iranian leaders in the united states
00:13:39.100so these people exist all over the place in britain you know france uh different western
00:13:44.940countries so maybe the desperate drive to martyrdom isn't quite as extreme as we
00:13:50.460have been led to believe well it just seems that uh people like to keep their options open
00:13:56.540murdered them seems to be an optional extra for some some members of the elite so their story is
00:14:04.620since monday have been that oil empty oil tankers are now heading for the u.s gulf coast uh to fill
00:14:13.820up and uh you know they can't buy from iran so they're buying from america america isn't the
00:14:20.300only place with oil for sale how big a deal is that is it going to solve any problems for the
00:14:27.500americans well certainly makes the americans a fair fair chunk of change and it it does ease
00:14:35.020the oil needs of their allies i mean china will get oil wherever it can and it was getting it
00:14:44.220from venezuela we'll likely get it from russia uh venezuelan oil would would now be of interest and
00:14:52.140and maybe mexican oil uh and certainly canadian oil if if if we could you know get around
00:14:59.260ourselves and and actually get our oil and gas industry up and running at full tilt we would0.99
00:15:05.980have a lot to offer the world right now do you think the yanks would actually let the chinese0.92
00:15:11.580buy oil from venezuela i think the united states would do what it's in its natural interest right
00:15:18.060now the americans have been quite clear that the chinese are hoarding oil and that they have not
00:15:25.100been a good partner in in helping to deal with this crisis and we've seen you know two chinese
00:15:32.220or a chinese tanker twice now try to enter uh into uh the blockade and turn around and retreat back
00:15:42.860away and we saw the treasury secretary say that china wants its oil it's not getting it through
00:15:48.540iran well let's just talk a little bit more about china how does the uh how does the rivalry between
00:15:58.620China and the United States fit into this conflict with Iran? The idea was that we just
00:16:05.020didn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But of course, now that China's ability to buy oil
00:16:12.220from Iran is impacted by the war, does that make the Chinese more hostile to the Americans,
00:16:22.060or does it mean that they take the Americans more seriously now than they might have under
00:16:27.180the former administration and recalibrate their their plans to reclaim taiwan or you know how
00:16:35.100does what's the big picture here well i think that there's there's no doubt that china is is
00:16:41.900a near peer competitor the united states and and russia and there's no doubt that both of them
00:16:46.700would have liked to have disrupted uh u.s uh influence and power in the persian gulf and the
00:16:54.140Gulf states, and they've tried. But the fact of the matter is, what China is coming to see,
00:17:01.940and what I don't think that it likes very much, is that there's one country that can project power0.78
00:17:07.280anywhere in the world at any time and do it successfully in a way that the Russian and the
00:17:12.620Chinese militaries can't, and that is the United States. And so I think the Chinese have now had a0.58
00:17:20.120little bit of pause to rethink their position. I don't suspect that the regime is as confident0.98
00:17:26.940as it was in Beijing. And you're continuing to see purges of its military leadership,
00:17:32.580including the only elements that had any combat experience. And I think that is causing a little
00:17:37.740bit of consternation in Beijing as well, and the widespread corruption through the military.
00:17:44.240And you're seeing this purge of the Secretary Generals continue, but there may also be elements of the old Chinese Guard that are actually purging allies of the President to disrupt his concentration power.
00:18:02.080So I think that the Chinese are finding themselves in a bit of a spot.0.81
00:18:05.060Well, indeed. Given that that is the case, let's say we take that theory and run with it. Does it1.00
00:18:15.540make sense for the Chinese to offer the Iranians sophisticated weaponry of the kind that possibly0.72
00:18:24.980could attack a U.S. carrier? Yeah, so the news reports are that the Chinese have offered
00:18:32.580man portable uh air defense missiles to the iranians which which the iranians uh uh would
00:18:40.580would use no you know way to try and defend themselves because their air defenses have failed
00:18:46.500um and and there have been you know all kinds of reports on that and and the chinese have denied it
00:18:54.580and i suspect that if they could disrupt the americans in some way that that would
00:18:59.540make them kind of feel uh better in in beijing uh the same with the russians they both have provided
00:19:06.740intelligence support and they probably provided some some uh other aid there were even reports
00:19:14.020that two chinese uh freighters have been filled with precursor chemicals for the iranian missile
00:19:20.260forces um i don't think that it's in their interest to do that in the way it's in the u.s
00:19:27.780interest to arm taiwan and i think that the chinese would be very reluctant to you to
00:19:34.100give the iranians what are called carrier kiss our killer missiles which are uh ballistic missiles
00:19:42.820geared to attack ships at sea uh you know u.s aircraft carriers got 6 000 people on it0.93
00:19:49.940you whack a u.s aircraft carrier and kill 6 000 people we're no longer talking about a naval
00:19:55.940blockade and be 52 bombers. Well, you wouldn't be, but then perhaps there are elements in China
00:20:08.120that would say, this is it. We've been waiting for this day for a long time. Let's go for it.
00:20:14.200I think the Chinese are enjoying the fact that U.S. attention is on the Middle East
00:20:18.240and that U.S. military assets are being used up and drawn to the Middle East. And I think that if
00:20:24.620you know, if you're in China, you're following that old rule of when your adversary makes a0.58
00:20:29.620mistake, let them, um, you know, the U S has, has dragged a lot of, of, uh, its military power out
00:20:37.940of the Pacific. But I think that there are ways that the U S has compensated for that likely.
00:20:43.640And, and it, it causes the Chinese planning capability, some, some problems. I mean, I think0.63
00:20:49.780the Chinese would, would like, uh, to, uh, see an end of this so they can get their oil and gas
00:20:57.200flowing again. Um, and, and they seem to enjoy their ability to be a disruptor. I mean, poor1.00
00:21:04.800Vladimir Putin right now is, is, is trying to play a role in, in this war and he's finding himself
00:21:11.000completely shoved off to the, to the edge of the stage, uh, where, where he's not drawing too much
00:21:16.640attention so the best the russians can do is say well give us your enriched iranian uh your uranium
00:21:25.360and we'll look after it for you that's the best that the russians have been able to do
00:21:32.720how do we know who won when it's over well i think that that's the big issue and i think that
00:21:43.600going with a ceasefire was probably the right thing to do politically and for optics
00:21:48.480but it was the wrong thing to do militarily um it's given the iranians a chance to reposition
00:21:55.360their missiles to dig out launchers to re-arm themselves and get ready for the next round and
00:22:00.880there will be a next round i think it's inevitable at this stage unless their economy collapses and
00:22:07.600we see the regime change from within having said that the the gravity for a u.s victory or an
00:22:16.000israeli victory because of the objectives they set for themselves is very high the iranians
00:22:21.520just have to survive they just have to endure so if we see at the end of this the iranians
00:22:28.720in control the persian gulf and the straits four moves which can't be allowed to continue
00:22:34.400you're going to see that the iranians come out of this much further ahead than they they would0.93
00:22:41.840have otherwise the challenge for the united states and israel is they need to really pull apart their0.96
00:22:49.040nuclear program and get rid of their their missiles and and and cut them off from the proxy
00:22:56.840and militias and really establish a new regime.
00:23:01.400And the regime that's in place now is hardline elements of the last regime.