Western strategy in the Middle East has long suffered from a fatal conceptual flaw: treating Islamic fundamentalist movements as isolated, strictly sectarian entities. If the United States is to liberate Iran from the brutal oppression of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), eliminate the existential threat to Israel, and structurally reduce terrorism across the region, it cannot afford to view the IRGC as “the enemy” — however much the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran has cast it into the limelight. Instead, American foreign policy must simultaneously target the Muslim Brotherhood, recognizing that the IRGC and the Brotherhood are a long-standing symbiotic, cross-sectarian alliance.
The IRGC and Muslim Brotherhood: An Alliance America Can’t Ignore
Shared enemies and decades of cooperation have repeatedly brought Sunni and Shia Islamists together despite their theological differences.
