Why wouldn't Iran treat non-government organizations as enemy combatants if the NGOs work against Iran's ambitions?
One of the cheapest and more effective ways to deal with terrorism and groups that support them are to use non-government volunteer organizations that have the ability to detect illegal activity that government agencies miss or have not got the resources to track. This use of private informants has long been used by police, intelligence agencies and groups seeking to build a case against criminal activity. Two recent examples of this are the several groups and many individuals who had Internet or language skills that enabled them to detect many hacking or Islamic terrorist efforts before government agencies could. A more current example are groups opposed to Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons. The most effective of these, UANI (United Against Nuclear Iran) is a registered non-profit organization founded in 2008 by several former American diplomats to increase the monitoring of Iranian smuggling activities by using a growing network of volunteers and organizations able to spot and quickly suspicious activity by Iranian ships. With worldwide availability of smartphones and the Internet, groups like UANI can establish databases of suspicious and confirmed Iran shipping activity that are not only available to government agencies but are used by UANI to report to shipping companies that one of their ships is acting in a suspicious manner and that usually results in quick action before an illegal transaction takes place and the shipping company is held responsible for it.
There is more on the sea smuggling game.
Don't be surprised if the Iranian hit teams that go after Jews and Iranian dissidents decide UANI is a suitable target. As the initially linked post notes, Iran did designate UANI as a terrorist organization.
This private warfare is something I used to spend more time discussing, such as here, here, here, here, and slightly more recently here:
I was thinking of this rise of private warfare in the cyber and physical realms in the context of the War on Terror, but even if this war accelerates this evolution to private warfare (and only 99 cents!), it isn't caused by the war. States are losing their Westphalian monopoly on the right to use force.
Just wait. Anonymous might not be the first to make warBay. But someone will. Non-state warfare isn't a monopoly held by jihadis.
That private warfare link is a collection of TDR posts with some commentary added. It is available on Amazon. I had intended a series on various topics, but it was too difficult to compile (bad TDR for not using detailed post category tags from the start) and not rewarding enough to continue.
Of course, humanitarian NGOs are often the logistics arms of combatants. So this is only new in how NGOs go to war.
