'Georgian Nightmare': Once-Staunch US Ally Is Now an Iranian Client State

The Republic of Georgia, once a robust U.S. ally, has transformed into an Iranian client state under the autocratic Georgian Dream Party, according to policy experts who spoke Thursday at the Hudson Institute. This dramatic shift in alliances has enabled Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to recruit Georgian intelligence assets who can freely move across Europe and even America to foment terror.

While the relationship has been percolating for years with support from Georgian Dream's leadership, lawmakers and experts noted a troubling escalation during the U.S. war against Iran, when the once-staunch U.S. ally permitted Russia to use its airspace to airlift supplies into Tehran. The alliance has not only empowered Moscow but also supercharged an international Axis of Resistance led by Russia, China, and Iran.

"Georgian Dream has helped Iran in the current war by allowing strategic Russian airlifters to transit its airspace en route to Iran, carrying supplies to help the Iranian regime and undermine President Trump," said House Foreign Affairs Committee member Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), who described the situation as a "Georgian nightmare."

Georgia's sharp turn toward Iran poses an acute threat to American national security, Wilson and others said, pointing to significant IRGC recruitment campaigns across the Eastern European nation that once stood in lockstep with the West. Georgia, the Hudson Institute determined in a recent investigatory report, now "provides Iran a new strategic platform in Eurasia" that acts as a "fertile ground for intelligence recruitment and paramilitary mobilization."

The national security threat does not stop at Europe's borders, according to Luke Coffey, a senior Hudson Institute fellow at its Center on Europe and Eurasia.

"Georgian citizens can travel more easily to the United States, they can travel more easily in the Schengen zone in Europe," Coffey said. "This is why the Iranians are targeting these ethnic Azerbaijani Georgia citizens."

This Shia ethnic group is deeply vulnerable to Iran's propaganda and is served in-country by a constellation of Tehran-backed social welfare groups that mainline the hardline regime's propaganda. In one notable case, Iran recruited a Georgian citizen to assassinate U.S.-based journalist Masih Alinejad for Alinejad's anti-regime work.

"Iran has long seen this community as a strategic target," Hudson noted in its March report, and has established branches of its Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly and the U.S.-sanctioned Al-Mustafa International University inside Georgia. "Iran-linked charitable foundations not only provide social welfare but also help Iran enhance its influence, transfer resources, and expand its soft power."

Al-Mustafa was designated as a terror outfit by President Donald Trump in 2020, during his first term in office, with the Treasury Department determining that the university clandestinely provides the IRGC and its Quds Force with the resources to conduct foreign "intelligence operations." Its presence in Georgia has grown substantially over the past decade, with support from the Georgian Dream party.

"Al-Mustafa University has three campuses in Georgia, and you know, back in Iran, it's a serious enterprise" with an annual budget of $100 million, said former Georgian parliament member Giorgi Kandelaki, who coauthored the March report. In at least one case, an Al-Mustafa official was "exposed for masterminding an attempted murder of an Israeli ambassador in Mexico. So, these kind of people and this institution, the Al-Mustafa University has three campuses."

Kandelaki noted that there are "confirmed cases" of Al-Mustafa outposts "being used for recruitment of individuals or operations against the U.S."

Though Iran is not hiding its operations inside Georgia, "there's almost no awareness in Washington about what is going on between Tehran and Tbilisi and what Iran is doing there," said Hudson's Coffey. "The Georgian Dream needs to be on notice that of all U.S. presidential administrations this one is not going to tolerate the IRGC recruiting and running wild in their country."

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