The Linchpin for Regional Ambitions and Security

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is an ideological military force that, since its creation, has been involved in virtually every facet of Iranian politics, society, and economics. Although far from monolithic in their views, most senior Guard commanders retain a revolutionary outlook infused with religion and nationalism. They use their service’s influence and presence throughout the country to shape the regime’s authoritarian ways and policies aimed at spreading Iranian influence across the Middle East. As far as most Guard leaders are concerned, exercising such sway is part of the IRGC’s constitutional mission, which is to defend the Islamic revolution. These men often meet challenges to the domestic status quo or Iran’s national security interests with repression and violence.

In the military realm, the IRGC is Iran’s preeminent service with air, land, naval, missile, and special operations components. Its preeminence flows from its origins as the protector of the nascent theocratic regime in 1979 and its success, along with the Iranian regular armed forces, in stopping the 1980 invasion by the Iraqi army. Since the Iran-Iraq war’s end in 1988, the IRGC has been the regime’s most loyal supporter and the firmest defender of the autocratic rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As the commander-in-chief of Iran’s military forces, Khamenei has returned this loyalty by favoring the IRGC with an extraordinary amount of institutional autonomy, allowing room for corruption in the Guard’s oversized presence in Iran’s economy. The Guard has maintained its favored position despite various failures over the years, including its flawed and costly wartime strategy against Iraq in the 1980s, the exposure of IRGC-supported terrorist operations that contributed to Iran’s isolation, and its domestic repression, which after the 2009 Green Revolution shook the regime’s legitimacy.