18 Revolutionary Guards Die in Blast in Northwestern Iran

14 Oct 2010 (New York Times)TEHRAN — An explosion on Tuesday at a Revolutionary Guards base in a remote area of southwestern Iran killed 18 members of the powerful
military organization and wounded 14 more, Iranian state news media reported on Wednesday.

In a statement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said the blast was caused by a fire spreading to an ammunition store at the base, which the research group Global Security says houses underground launching and storage facilities for Iran’s medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. However, the base is near the city of Khorramabad, about 300 miles from Tehran and close to Iran’s restive Kurdistan region, the site in recent months of several attacks on Revolutionary Guards installations and personnel.

Last week, two Guards soldiers and five Kurdish militants were killed in a gunfight in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan Province.

In September, a bomb attack on a military parade in the ethnic Kurdish city of Mahabad killed 12 civilian spectators and wounded dozens more. Iranian officials accused “the Zionist regime and its allies” of masterminding the attack. State media said that Revolutionary Guards forces crossed into neighboring Iraq over the following days, killing 30 Kurdish fighters who were said to be involved in the bombing.

Formed in the early years of the war with Iraq in the 1980s, the Revolutionary Guards has expanded under Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into a vast military-economic conglomerate with growing political ambitions. It is widely thought to have been instrumental in the violent crackdown on Iran’s political opposition after last year’s disputed presidential election and to be leading Iran’s nuclear program.

In June, the United Nations imposed sanctions aimed specifically at restricting the financial resources of the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliate companies.