Sepah-e Qods

The wild card

I generated this one, using the HiDream I1 Fast engine.

In the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps¹ the department responsible for unconventional warfare, foreign intelligence, and “covert extraterritorial operations” is the Quds Force².

Formed in 1988 by combining Department 900 of the IRGC — responsible for military intelligence during the Iran-Iraq War — and the IRGC’s “Special External Operations Department” — which helped set up Hezbollah, and various other Shi’a militias to be pains-in-the-arse to various governments — the Quds Force (IRGC-QF) is best thought of as the result if you took a dash of wish-dot-com CIA, a smidgen of Temu JSOC, a hefty dose of inshallah, a giant glug of Twelver fanaticism, and ran it all through an absentee Russian blender.

Where the IRGC makes sure that the Iranian military doesn’t Get Ideas, and keeps a firm boot on the necks of the Iranian citizenry, the Quds Force runs around fomenting turmoil in the rest of the world.

The Quds Force manages paramilitary training camps for Budding Young Terrorists³, sets up weapons factories for militias and terrorist groups⁴, handles mullah bank accounts in China, dabbles in the drug trade, recruits terror cells, and putters about in the occasional Direct Action.

If you listen to the Media, or to various pundits, the Qods Force is composed of “highly-disciplined”, “highly-talented”, “extremely capable”, and “best of the IRGC” folks.

I am … less impressed.

First off, being the “Best of the IRGC” is much like being the “Best chihuahua in the pound”. Very laudable and impressive … for chihuahuas.⁵ Not so much to the people with Dobermanns.

Secondly, one of the primary qualities required as a Quds Force recruit is an unwavering devotion to the Twelver doctrine. Religious fanatics tend to be … less reliable than one might wish.

Thirdly — the late, unlamented Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei (long may he rot) micromanaged the hell out of the IRGC-QF. A clinically-paranoid little bugsnipe Khamenei (Democrat-Hell) was pretty aware of what happens to Third World leaders when their subordinates have a sudden attack of conscience and/or ambition, so he kept his black operations guys on a really tight leash.

“Ok, Ian, so why the lecture?”

Well, in the Quds Force world view, the world is divided into four Command Centres, and another six “Corps”. Guess who’s in the Ninth Corp of the Sepah-e Qods?

If you answered “North America”, congratulations, you get the kewpie doll.

“But …”

Yah. There are most certainly IRGC-QF cells in the United States. How many? More than the optimists⁶ will admit to, but less than the pessimists⁷ will shriek about.

Does this worry me? Eeh. I’m a little more alert than usual, and I’m trading in my usual six or ten-round carry piece for something with an optic and a 17-round magazine, but other than that not really.

Historically, the Quds Force is better at winding up Useful Idiots and turning them loose — which means it’s just business as usual.

Also remember that the prime quality looked for in a Quds recruit is religious fanaticism. Religious fanatics — particularly of the Twelver flavour — can’t keep that part hidden for very long. Somebody is going to snitch them out.

Finally, they’ve been micromanaged to the point that they need direction — and the guy that provides that direction is currently a pink mist drifting gently over the Zagros Mountains. As for his replacements, those little bugsnipes are nervous enough that — in the words of Kelly Grayson — you could hand them a lump of charcoal, and they’d return a diamond … as long as you don’t care where it had been.⁸

TL;DR: Yes, they’re here. Look for a minor uptick in Islamicist violence until they get turfed off to the Choir Eternal, rounded up by the authorities, or bugger-off on their own.

What should you do about it? Carry your firearm —which you should have been doing anyway — and get about your life as usual.

Ian

1. No, the “I” in “IRGC” doesn’t stand for “Iran”. That should be a clue.

2. “Sepah-e Qods” in Persian.

3. if you’re a Middle Eastern thug, you go to training in Iran; if you’re of the
African flavour, you attend camp in the Sudan.

4. The Explosively-Formed Penetrators that killed or injured hundreds of American troops in Iraq? You can thank the Quds Force for those.

5. I once described the mullahs as “Frothing little chihuahuas, turbans flying off their heads from the intensity of their tiny rage”. Boy, that didn’t endear me to a bunch of people.

6. FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, you know — the Usual Suspects.

7. Russian propaganda, Iranian propaganda, Chinese propaganda; and anyone who think that the very presence of terror cells on US soil will politically damage whichever political lizard they don’t like.

8. Not to mention having the life expectancy of an asthmatic fruit-fly.