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Iran's Qods Force: Proxy Wars, Terrorism, and the War on America
The end of the Cold War ushered in a challenging new era for U.S. defense planners. The certainties of planning for conventional war or, in extremis, nuclear war gave way to a new form of unconventional warfare waged by American adversaries like Al Qaeda, Somali warlords, and Iran. Iran's Qods Force examines how one nation state, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has exploited the advantages of unconventional warfare to expand its influence in the Middle East while, at the same time, limiting the impact of U.S. power in the region. At the forefront of its efforts is the Qods Force, the elite clandestine wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Owen Sirrs analyzes how Iran uses unconventional warfare to try to achieve one of its most cherished objectives, hegemony over the Middle East, and demonstrates how U.S. policymakers and warfighters were repeatedly stymied by Iran's unconventional warfare strategy, which straddled the threshold between conventional and covert warfare. Iran pursues its hegemonic bid even though it lacks many of the accepted attributes of national power like a strong, diversified economy; a modernized, power-projection military; and allies to balance the strength of its many adversaries. Still, as the book explains through specific examples of Iranian covert action in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, Iran is closer to regional leadership in 2021 than at any time in the last three hundred years.
Owen Sirrs analyzes how Iran uses unconventional warfare to try to achieve one of its most cherished objectives, hegemony over the Middle East, and demonstrates how U.S. policymakers and warfighters were repeatedly stymied by Iran's unconventional warfare strategy, which straddled the threshold between conventional and covert warfare. Iran pursues its hegemonic bid even though it lacks many of the accepted attributes of national power like a strong, diversified economy; a modernized, power-projection military; and allies to balance the strength of its many adversaries. Still, as the book explains through specific examples of Iranian covert action in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, Iran is closer to regional leadership in 2021 than at any time in the last three hundred years.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2022
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March 11, 2025
Superb, detailed exploration of what is, in effect, Iran's CIA, fomenting trouble in Latin America, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria.
In so doing, it reveals aspects of the Iraq War that loudmouth whingers Douglas Porch, Andrew Bacevich and Gian Gentile either were not privy to or chose to deliberately ignore. Gentile specifically presents 2005 Iraq as being a senseless Sunni-Shia civil war, whereas Owen Sirrs shows that it was, in reality, Iran manipulating the entire constellation of Shia terr groups behind the scenes. Unlike Gentile, Bacevich and Porch, Sirrs honestly reports that US Special Forces did score several effective opérations ponctuelles which did force Iran to lay low for a while.
One discordant note. He says that the Pasdaran-linked bombings in Argentina constitute the worst pre-9/11 Attentäter in the Western Hemisphere. The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing was deadlier. An oversight, but on par with his agency, the DIA, which did nothing about Ana Montes, unlike France's DST, which identified MI6 agent Alfred Fox in Algiers as running guns to the FLN, and then got Bobby Dovecar to take care of Fox.
In so doing, it reveals aspects of the Iraq War that loudmouth whingers Douglas Porch, Andrew Bacevich and Gian Gentile either were not privy to or chose to deliberately ignore. Gentile specifically presents 2005 Iraq as being a senseless Sunni-Shia civil war, whereas Owen Sirrs shows that it was, in reality, Iran manipulating the entire constellation of Shia terr groups behind the scenes. Unlike Gentile, Bacevich and Porch, Sirrs honestly reports that US Special Forces did score several effective opérations ponctuelles which did force Iran to lay low for a while.
One discordant note. He says that the Pasdaran-linked bombings in Argentina constitute the worst pre-9/11 Attentäter in the Western Hemisphere. The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing was deadlier. An oversight, but on par with his agency, the DIA, which did nothing about Ana Montes, unlike France's DST, which identified MI6 agent Alfred Fox in Algiers as running guns to the FLN, and then got Bobby Dovecar to take care of Fox.
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