Why Trump is obliterating one Iranian army but sparing another

It’s a tale of two Iran armies.One, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is stacked with fierce loyalists and designed to guard the theocratic regime, with a force estimated to be 150,000 strong.They have been targeted in US and Israel attacks.The other is the conventional Islamic Republic of Iran Army, called the Artesh, which numbers 350,000 and is designed to protect the nation’s borders and secure the Iranian homeland.

And when the bombing stops, they might serve US interests as a force for change.Now all they have to do is survive.President Trump has alluded to the difference between them in his public comments — and the distinction is becoming evident in the targeting decisions of his War Department.“The risk in attacking the Iranian army is that some people hope it will launch a coup of some sort against the Revolutionary Guards and put a new government in place,” warned Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel at the Center for Strategic International Studies.He noted that if the regular army didn’t end up on the target list, it could signal that Trump would leave the force in place to counterbalance the IRGC.“There is a whole set of civilian targets that have not been hit.

For example, the lights are still on in Tehran,” he noted.Increasing hardship on the population is a “risky strategy,” Cancian told The Post.Some lawmakers who are now getting briefed by the administration on the Iran war are also issuing cautions.“If you hit them so hard they can’t actually function as a nation, at the end of it, it doesn’t help,” said Sen.James Lankford (R-Oklahoma).Lankford used Libya — a country left in shambles in 2011 after the killing of its strongman leader Muammar Gaddafi — as an example of what to avoid in Iran.“Then it’s chaos there.

Then it’s Libya,” he said, noting the goal in Iran is to stop the IRGC but not cause a “breakdown.”Lankford, an Armed Services Committee member, said Iran is “going to have a functio...