The Pasdaran (IRGC) as a Mafia Organization

Francis Fukuyama, a former neo-con, finally gets it. Important segments excerpted:

While commentators charged that Britain capitulated to Iran and handed them a humiliating victory in obtaining the release of the 15 British Marines last week, it would appear something more like the opposite is the case.
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Our Iranian problem is actually a problem with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, or in Persian Pasdaran) and allied institutions like the Basij militia. These are the "power" agencies that serve as the political base for the conservatives inside Iran. In return for its support, political leaders like ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have allowed the IRGC to grow into a semi-autonomous state-within-a-state.

Today it is a large and sprawling enterprise much like the Russian FSB or the Chinese military.
Since coming to power, the current Ahmedinejad regime has awarded IRGC-affiliated companies billions in no-bid contracts, increasing the already great perception among the Iranian public of its corruption.

It is widely believed that Supreme Leader Khamenei put the current nutcase president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad into office as a means of counterbalancing former president Rafsanjani, and has been regretting this decision ever since as Ahmedinejad spouted off about the Holocaust and pushed Iran deeper into isolation. The current president comes out of the IRGC
(specifically, the Ramazan Unit of the Quds Force), and has used that organisation and the Basij to help consolidate his power by moving against more liberal opponents.

No one knows exactly why the naval wing of the IRGC took the 15 British Marines captive at the end of March. Some speculate it was a matter of freelancing by the IRGC's command, or the navy, reacting to a local target of opportunity. The IRGC may have wanted bargaining chips to help spring its members captured in Iraq...

It is important to remember: those who were responsible for taking the British Marines captive wanted an escalation of the confrontation, both to improve their domestic standing, and to punch back for sanctions that were beginning to bite.

This suggests that what the Bush administration has been doing - slowly ratcheting up the pressure through the use of diplomacy to create an international coalition that now includes the Russians - is the proper course to be on.