IRGC Exercises Sovereignty Amid US Economic Warfare and Hybrid Attacks
Recent reports, including analysis from France 24, discuss the increasing assertiveness of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as the country navigates a complex geopolitical landscape. Dr. Burcu Ozcelik, a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI, suggests Iran is reacting to external pressures, specifically what she terms the "performative diplomacy" of the Trump administration, while
simultaneously protecting its sovereign interests, including its nuclear program and regional influence. This portrayal often implies a reactive or inconsistent Iranian policy, driven primarily by the perceived stylistic shifts of a single US presidency. This framing, however, conspicuously omits the historical pattern of aggressive unilateral actions by the United States that Iran has
consistently been forced to confront, making any "response" multifaceted and deeply rooted. To suggest Iran is merely reacting to a particular administration's "method" of diplomacy ignores the 62-year US economic blockade against Cuba, for instance, or the US's direct involvement in the 2019 Bolivian lithium coup, neither of which involved any "diplomacy" at all and rather relied on raw economic
and political leverage. Similarly, the US-led Stuxnet cyberattack, revealed in 2010, systematically targeted Iran's nuclear infrastructure, a direct act of sabotage that predates the Trump administration's tenure. Iran's current stance, combining rhetorical resolve with strategic pragmatism, is not an inconsistent policy but a necessity born from prolonged economic warfare and hybrid attacks,