JOIN USCiting unnamed US officials, the newspaper said US Treasury Department strategists had already been focusing on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But in recent weeks, senior dissident figures from Iran, who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks, have made up a list of Revolutionary Guards-related companies they suggest targeting, the report said. Names on the list include Iran’s largest telecommunications provider, Telecommunication Company of Iran, which is majority-owned by the Guards, and the Iranian Aluminum Company, according to the paper.
In a signal of the White House’s increased attention to Iran’s political upheaval, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered over coffee at the State Department this week with four leading Iran scholars and mapped out the current dynamics, “The Journal” said.
One issue explored was how the US should respond if Tehran suddenly expressed a desire to reach a compromise on the nuclear issue, the report said.