Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone. Today we're going to be taking a
Speaker 1: look at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the code's forces.
Speaker 1: So let's think about something. You're a dissident, you fled
Speaker 1: Ran years ago. You're living in Berlin or London, you
Speaker 1: have a job, maybe a family, You write, you speak,
Speaker 1: criticize the regime publicly because you believe that is what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do when you have the freedom to
Speaker 1: do it. You're not a spy, you're not a combatant.
Speaker 1: You're a civilian with a keyboard in an opinion. And
Speaker 1: there's a man Tehran who has your name on a list,
Speaker 1: not a metaphorical list, a real tangible list, a list.
Speaker 1: It moves to a bureaucratic apparatus, gets signed off by
Speaker 1: people with titles, gets handed down to a unit that
Speaker 1: has done this before, and results in a team showing
Speaker 1: up somewhere near you, near where you live, with a
Speaker 1: plan and a timeline. This isn't hypothetical, folks, This is documented.
Speaker 1: It's happened in Germany, in France, in the US, in Albania, Lebanon,
Speaker 1: you name it. It's happened on every continent where Iran
Speaker 1: has decided it has enemies, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the Kutz Force, the external operation arm
Speaker 1: of the IRGC Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The organization has
Speaker 1: been called Iran's tip of the spear, its most lethal
Speaker 1: instrument of foreign policy, in the engine behind one of
Speaker 1: the most sophisticated and persistent shadow war campaigns in modern
Speaker 1: intelligence history. Let me give you the architecture first, because
Speaker 1: you cannot understand what this organization does until you understand
Speaker 1: what it is. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard was established in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution.
Speaker 1: It was built explicitly to protect the revolution, not just
Speaker 1: the state, and that distinction matters. A conventional military protects
Speaker 1: borders and national interests. The IRGC was assigned from the
Speaker 1: beginning to protect in ideology. That ideological mandate gave it
Speaker 1: a different kind of operational permission and that most military
Speaker 1: organizations carry inside the RIGC. Because force is the External
Speaker 1: Operations Directorate, Kutz is the Arabic, Arabic and Persian word
Speaker 1: for Jerusalem. That naming is intentional. The force was built
Speaker 1: around a revolutionary objective that extends far beyond Iran's borders.
Speaker 1: Its mandate includes supporting, training, equipping, and directing proxy forces
Speaker 1: throughout Middle East and beyond, conducting intelligence operations in foreign countries,
Speaker 1: running assassination and kidnapping programs, targeting dissidents and perceived enemies
Speaker 1: of the Islamic Republic, and projecting Iranian influence in ways
Speaker 1: that give Tehran plausible deniability. At its peak, the Kutz
Speaker 1: Forces operated with an estimated strength of somewhere between ten
Speaker 1: thy twenty thousand, thought the actual numbers impossible to verify.
Speaker 1: It ran operations through a network of embassies, front companies,
Speaker 1: cultural organizations, and proxy militias spanning Lebanon, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza,
Speaker 1: Latin America, and for roughly two decades from approximately nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight until twenty twenty, all of it ran through
Speaker 1: one man, Solomone. If you have not read everything available
Speaker 1: in Solomoni, stop after this episode and do that, because
Speaker 1: he's one of the most consequential intelligence and military figures
Speaker 1: of the post Cold War era, and he operated almost
Speaker 1: entirely in the shadows until he didn't. Solomani joined the
Speaker 1: IRGC in the late seventies, fought in the Iran Iraq War,
Speaker 1: and by the late nineteen nineties had taken command of
Speaker 1: the Kuds Force, where he built over the following two decades.
Speaker 1: Was not just a military organization, it was a relationship network.
Speaker 1: Solomonia understood a fundamental level the power projection at the
Speaker 1: scale he was attempting require personal trust between him self
Speaker 1: and the leaders of every proxy organization he supported. He
Speaker 1: met with Hassan Nozraala of Hezbola personally and repeatedly. He
Speaker 1: was embedded with Shia militia commanders, and he rocked during
Speaker 1: the fight against License. He traveled constantly in and out
Speaker 1: of conflict zones, off in a way that should have
Speaker 1: gotten him killed. Because his physical presence was how he
Speaker 1: maintained the web. American intelligence tracked him for years. There
Speaker 1: were reportedly multiple instances where the decision was made not
Speaker 1: to act against them because of concerns about escalation on
Speaker 1: the downstream consequences for regional stability. That calculus held into
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty, when a Reaper drone strike Baghdad International
Speaker 1: Airport killed Solomoni along with Abu Mahdi al Muhandas, the
Speaker 1: deputy commander of the Iranian backed popular mobilization forces. The
Speaker 1: question of whether that strike was strategically correct, is legitimately
Speaker 1: contested is not contested, is what Solomoni had spent two
Speaker 1: decades building. Let me walk you through some of the
Speaker 1: documented operations, because the scope of what the Cuds Force
Speaker 1: and his proxies have carried out is not fully understood
Speaker 1: by most. The nineteen ninety four bombing of the Amia
Speaker 1: Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires killed eighty five people
Speaker 1: in wounded hundreds. Argentine investigators and prosecutors spent decades building
Speaker 1: a case that pointed to kods Force involvement in planning
Speaker 1: and support with his Bull's operational unit executing the attack.
Speaker 1: Iranian officials, including a former president and former intelligence minister,
Speaker 1: were ultimately names of suspects in Argentine indictments. That operation
Speaker 1: was not a military strike against the military target. It
Speaker 1: was a mass casualty attack against civilians. In South America.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, the US law enforcement disrupted an alleged
Speaker 1: Coots Force plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the
Speaker 1: United States on American soil. The plan reportedly involved hiring
Speaker 1: a member of a the Mexican drug cartel to carry
Speaker 1: out the killing. The sophistication of the plan was debated
Speaker 1: by analysts, but the intent was not because Force officer
Speaker 1: had made direct contact with an individual he was believed
Speaker 1: was a cartel operative and was willing to pay for
Speaker 1: a political assassination inside d C. Germany expelled the Iranian
Speaker 1: intelligence officers and documented the Iranian surveillance operations against Jewish
Speaker 1: community organizations and Israeli diplomatic facilities in German soil. Multiple
Speaker 1: European countries have intercepted CUTS Force linked operatives and disrupted
Speaker 1: assassination plots against Iranian dissidents living in exile. In Albania,
Speaker 1: the Albanian government expelled the Iranian ambassador and another diplomat
Speaker 1: following intelligence that CUTS Force assets were planning attacks against
Speaker 1: Israeli in Jewish targets during passover. Albania, a Muslim majority
Speaker 1: NATO member with historically warm relations with Israel, made a
Speaker 1: significant diplomatic decision based on what it's intelligence service uncovered.
Speaker 1: The pattern is consistent across geography and across time. The
Speaker 1: CUTS Force operates wherever Tehran perceives threats or opportunities, does
Speaker 1: not stop at borders. It does not recognize as a
Speaker 1: civilian or diplomatic startists status of targets. I want you
Speaker 1: to understand something about this organization because this is where
Speaker 1: the intelligence trade craft gets fascinating and disturbing. The cuts
Speaker 1: Force does not only US Iranian nationals. In fact, using
Speaker 1: Iranian nationals for sensitive operations in Western countries is exactly
Speaker 1: what because people caught and they know that. The more
Speaker 1: sophisticated approach involves recruiting from diaspora communities, from criminal networks
Speaker 1: with no ideological connection to Iran who simply want money,
Speaker 1: from foreign nationals who can be converced through family members
Speaker 1: still inside Iran, and through front organizations that give operatives
Speaker 1: legitimate cover. The use of criminal proxies is particularly significant.
Speaker 1: When you outsource an assassination of someone with no Iranian passport,
Speaker 1: no known connection to the IRGC, and no ideological profile
Speaker 1: that would draw intelligence. You create a layer of deniability
Speaker 1: that can hold up into public scrutiny even when the
Speaker 1: intelligence community knows the truth. The gap between what intelligence
Speaker 1: services know and what can be proven in open court
Speaker 1: or acknowledge and diplomatic towns is exactly the space that
Speaker 1: shadow war operators exploit. Defector accounts have described the Cuts
Speaker 1: Force operational culture that is highly compartmented, deep patient, and
Speaker 1: willing to run operations on timelines that stretch years. Similar
Speaker 1: to the Russians, an asset may be cultivated, placed in
Speaker 1: left dormant for a long time before being activated. The
Speaker 1: Western intelligence community, which often operates in budget cycles and
Speaker 1: shifting political priorities, forces a structural disadvantage against an organizations
Speaker 1: playing a generational game. Solomonia is gone, what is Mael Khani,
Speaker 1: who replaced them as Cuts Force commander, has continued the
Speaker 1: operational posture. Iran has made explicit threats against former American officials,
Speaker 1: including individuals who are involved in decision to authorize as
Speaker 1: Solomoni strike. The Justice Department has publicly indicted Iranian nationals
Speaker 1: for plots against Americans soil or disrupted up to twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: What does all this mean? It means that Iran has
Speaker 1: made a calculated decision sustained across multiple administrations multiple Supreme leaders,
Speaker 1: at the cost of projecting power through covert and proxy
Speaker 1: means is lower than the benefit. It means that the
Speaker 1: international norms around assassination and extraterretorial territorial operations and have
Speaker 1: not functioned as a sufficient deterrent, and it means that
Speaker 1: for the dissonance on those lists, for the intelligence officers
Speaker 1: who've been targeted, for the civilians who happened to be
Speaker 1: near a target. The shadow war is not abstract. It
Speaker 1: is very real. Understanding how this machine works. Who's not
Speaker 1: optional if you want to understand the Middle East American
Speaker 1: foreign policy. The Cuz Force is not a French story.
Speaker 1: It is one of the defining co writ programs of
Speaker 1: our era.