Revolutionary Guards Commanders Say They Won’t Fire on Iranian People

Con Coughlin is reporting that he has seen a copy of an alleged letter from earlier this month addressed to the chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps by senior IRGC officers in Tehran, Tabriz , Isfahan and Qom where they state they will not fire on Iranian protestors and “use your authority over the Basij to order them to leave their truncheons at home next time.” “We promise our people that we will not shoot nor beat our brothers who are seeking to express legitimate protest against the policies and conduct of their leader,” it says. They also state that the use of violence to crush the protestors is a violation of Islam. He reports that Western diplomats have confirmed the letter’s authenticity. He has published the full letter here.

My story about a number of senior commanders in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards writing a formal letter to their commander,  Mohammed Ali Jafari, appealing for restraint when dealing with anti-government protests has aroused a great deal of interest, particularly among Iranian opposition groups.
I therefore thought it might be helpful if I published the text of the letter in full:
To the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Sarlashgar Mohamed-Ali Ja’afari, may Allah’s blessing be upon you,
Your Excellency, we have witnessed the behaviour of the Egyptian army, and the Tunisian army before it. We remember well the violent clashes that occurred between the IRGC and Basij forces and our people during the demonstrations of Summer 1388. We turn to you, the IRGC commander, requesting that you use your authority over the Basij to order them to leave their truncheons at home next time. It goes without saying that we, who swore to defend the Islamic Revolution, are well acquainted with the highest Islamic values of tolerance and liberalism (in
Persian – “Tasamukh va Tasahul”), and are familiar with the Islamic principles that “oppose the use of the whip or the club as a means of quelling dispute or dissension”. We promise our people that we will not shoot nor beat our brothers who are seeking to express legitimate protest against the policies and conduct of their leader.
IRGC commander: We, proud IRGC officers from various units who are unanimous in our opinion and convinced of its justice, turn to you to ask that you put the IRGC and the Basij straight, and enable us to continue serving as IRGC offers who can be proud of their commander, organization, and regime. We will all be judged by Allah for our deeds.
The letter was written earlier this month following the violence in Tunisia and Egypt. The original is, of course, written in Farsi, and its authentication has been verified to me by a trustworthy diplomatic source. The signatories, who range in rank from major to lieutenant-colonel, are serving in Guards units based in Tehran, Isfahan, Qom and Tabriz.
To my mind it provides a fascinating insight into the power struggles currently taking place within Iran’s ruling theocracy about how best to respond to the surprise resurgence of the Green Movement. Question marks concerning the loyalty of the Revolutionary Guards to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who only served as a junior officer in the corps, have been circulating for some time, and may explain why the regime relied to heavily on the Basij, the people’s militia, rather than the Guards to crush the anti-government protests in 2009 that erupted following Mr Ahmadinejad’s hotly disputed victory in the presidential election. It will be interesting to see how the regime deals with the mass anti-government protests that are planned for tomorrow.