June 30, 2006:
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is preparing for another extensive military exercise. This one is apparently intended to cope with a limited, but highly intense and focused series of strikes by a major unfriendly foreign power that is tied down elsewhere. These exercises are mainly for generating internal propaganda. For most Iranians, the Revolutionary Guard is seen as a corrupt police force, whose main job is to keep the minority Islamic conservatives in power. So the government tries use these military exercises to spin the Revolutionary Guards as valiant patriots, ready to die in the defense of the motherland. The Revolutionary Guard would do that, but mainly they are their to die defending the religious dictatorship that controls Iran. This message is conveyed more indirectly during these propafanda campaigns.