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Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone. Today we're going to be taking a

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look at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the code's forces.

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So let's think about something. You're a dissident, you fled

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Ran years ago. You're living in Berlin or London, you

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have a job, maybe a family, You write, you speak,

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criticize the regime publicly because you believe that is what

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you're supposed to do when you have the freedom to

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do it. You're not a spy, you're not a combatant.

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You're a civilian with a keyboard in an opinion. And

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there's a man Tehran who has your name on a list,

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not a metaphorical list, a real tangible list, a list.

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It moves to a bureaucratic apparatus, gets signed off by

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people with titles, gets handed down to a unit that

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has done this before, and results in a team showing

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up somewhere near you, near where you live, with a

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plan and a timeline. This isn't hypothetical, folks, This is documented.

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It's happened in Germany, in France, in the US, in Albania, Lebanon,

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you name it. It's happened on every continent where Iran

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has decided it has enemies, and today we're going to

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be talking about the Kutz Force, the external operation arm

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of the IRGC Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The organization has

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been called Iran's tip of the spear, its most lethal

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instrument of foreign policy, in the engine behind one of

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the most sophisticated and persistent shadow war campaigns in modern

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intelligence history. Let me give you the architecture first, because

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you cannot understand what this organization does until you understand

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what it is. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard was established in

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nineteen seventy nine in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution.

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It was built explicitly to protect the revolution, not just

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the state, and that distinction matters. A conventional military protects

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borders and national interests. The IRGC was assigned from the

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beginning to protect in ideology. That ideological mandate gave it

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a different kind of operational permission and that most military

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organizations carry inside the RIGC. Because force is the External

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Operations Directorate, Kutz is the Arabic, Arabic and Persian word

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for Jerusalem. That naming is intentional. The force was built

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around a revolutionary objective that extends far beyond Iran's borders.

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Its mandate includes supporting, training, equipping, and directing proxy forces

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throughout Middle East and beyond, conducting intelligence operations in foreign countries,

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running assassination and kidnapping programs, targeting dissidents and perceived enemies

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of the Islamic Republic, and projecting Iranian influence in ways

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that give Tehran plausible deniability. At its peak, the Kutz

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Forces operated with an estimated strength of somewhere between ten

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thy twenty thousand, thought the actual numbers impossible to verify.

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It ran operations through a network of embassies, front companies,

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cultural organizations, and proxy militias spanning Lebanon, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza,

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Latin America, and for roughly two decades from approximately nineteen

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ninety eight until twenty twenty, all of it ran through

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one man, Solomone. If you have not read everything available

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in Solomoni, stop after this episode and do that, because

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he's one of the most consequential intelligence and military figures

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of the post Cold War era, and he operated almost

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entirely in the shadows until he didn't. Solomani joined the

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IRGC in the late seventies, fought in the Iran Iraq War,

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and by the late nineteen nineties had taken command of

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the Kuds Force, where he built over the following two decades.

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Was not just a military organization, it was a relationship network.

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Solomonia understood a fundamental level the power projection at the

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scale he was attempting require personal trust between him self

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and the leaders of every proxy organization he supported. He

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met with Hassan Nozraala of Hezbola personally and repeatedly. He

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was embedded with Shia militia commanders, and he rocked during

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the fight against License. He traveled constantly in and out

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of conflict zones, off in a way that should have

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gotten him killed. Because his physical presence was how he

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maintained the web. American intelligence tracked him for years. There

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were reportedly multiple instances where the decision was made not

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to act against them because of concerns about escalation on

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the downstream consequences for regional stability. That calculus held into

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January twenty twenty, when a Reaper drone strike Baghdad International

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Airport killed Solomoni along with Abu Mahdi al Muhandas, the

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deputy commander of the Iranian backed popular mobilization forces. The

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question of whether that strike was strategically correct, is legitimately

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contested is not contested, is what Solomoni had spent two

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decades building. Let me walk you through some of the

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documented operations, because the scope of what the Cuds Force

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and his proxies have carried out is not fully understood

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by most. The nineteen ninety four bombing of the Amia

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Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires killed eighty five people

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in wounded hundreds. Argentine investigators and prosecutors spent decades building

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a case that pointed to kods Force involvement in planning

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and support with his Bull's operational unit executing the attack.

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Iranian officials, including a former president and former intelligence minister,

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were ultimately names of suspects in Argentine indictments. That operation

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was not a military strike against the military target. It

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was a mass casualty attack against civilians. In South America.

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In twenty eleven, the US law enforcement disrupted an alleged

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Coots Force plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the

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United States on American soil. The plan reportedly involved hiring

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a member of a the Mexican drug cartel to carry

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out the killing. The sophistication of the plan was debated

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by analysts, but the intent was not because Force officer

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had made direct contact with an individual he was believed

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was a cartel operative and was willing to pay for

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a political assassination inside d C. Germany expelled the Iranian

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intelligence officers and documented the Iranian surveillance operations against Jewish

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community organizations and Israeli diplomatic facilities in German soil. Multiple

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European countries have intercepted CUTS Force linked operatives and disrupted

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assassination plots against Iranian dissidents living in exile. In Albania,

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the Albanian government expelled the Iranian ambassador and another diplomat

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following intelligence that CUTS Force assets were planning attacks against

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Israeli in Jewish targets during passover. Albania, a Muslim majority

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NATO member with historically warm relations with Israel, made a

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significant diplomatic decision based on what it's intelligence service uncovered.

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The pattern is consistent across geography and across time. The

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CUTS Force operates wherever Tehran perceives threats or opportunities, does

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not stop at borders. It does not recognize as a

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civilian or diplomatic startists status of targets. I want you

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to understand something about this organization because this is where

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the intelligence trade craft gets fascinating and disturbing. The cuts

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Force does not only US Iranian nationals. In fact, using

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Iranian nationals for sensitive operations in Western countries is exactly

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what because people caught and they know that. The more

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sophisticated approach involves recruiting from diaspora communities, from criminal networks

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with no ideological connection to Iran who simply want money,

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from foreign nationals who can be converced through family members

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still inside Iran, and through front organizations that give operatives

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legitimate cover. The use of criminal proxies is particularly significant.

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When you outsource an assassination of someone with no Iranian passport,

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no known connection to the IRGC, and no ideological profile

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that would draw intelligence. You create a layer of deniability

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that can hold up into public scrutiny even when the

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intelligence community knows the truth. The gap between what intelligence

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services know and what can be proven in open court

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or acknowledge and diplomatic towns is exactly the space that

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shadow war operators exploit. Defector accounts have described the Cuts

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Force operational culture that is highly compartmented, deep patient, and

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willing to run operations on timelines that stretch years. Similar

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to the Russians, an asset may be cultivated, placed in

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left dormant for a long time before being activated. The

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Western intelligence community, which often operates in budget cycles and

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shifting political priorities, forces a structural disadvantage against an organizations

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playing a generational game. Solomonia is gone, what is Mael Khani,

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who replaced them as Cuts Force commander, has continued the

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operational posture. Iran has made explicit threats against former American officials,

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including individuals who are involved in decision to authorize as

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Solomoni strike. The Justice Department has publicly indicted Iranian nationals

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for plots against Americans soil or disrupted up to twenty twenty.

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What does all this mean? It means that Iran has

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made a calculated decision sustained across multiple administrations multiple Supreme leaders,

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at the cost of projecting power through covert and proxy

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means is lower than the benefit. It means that the

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international norms around assassination and extraterretorial territorial operations and have

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not functioned as a sufficient deterrent, and it means that

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for the dissonance on those lists, for the intelligence officers

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who've been targeted, for the civilians who happened to be

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near a target. The shadow war is not abstract. It

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is very real. Understanding how this machine works. Who's not

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optional if you want to understand the Middle East American

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foreign policy. The Cuz Force is not a French story.

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It is one of the defining co writ programs of

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our era.