The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has long been a
powerful force in the Middle East that is often overlooked. With around 190,000
members, plus an estimated 450,000 reserves in the Basij paramilitary, the
largest component of Iran’s Armed Forces also controls much of the country’s
politics, intelligence and economy.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, was killed on February 28 by an Israeli airstrike. US President Donald Trump urged the Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC) to give up its weapons in return for immunity. IRGC forces refused the offer, and with many more of its leaders killed over the last month, it shows no sign of giving up.
As US ground forces
deploy to the Middle East, it is imperative to understand that – despite a
month of widespread US-Israeli bombing, damaged infrastructure, internal
fractures and decimated leadership – the IRGC will likely resist any invasion
of Iranian territory with tenacity. Its
history demonstrates why.
From militia to
frontline force
The ad hoc street
militias of students devoted to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's vision of an
Islamic Republic gave rise to the IRGC in 1979. It stood in opposition to
groups that wanted to establish a secular republic following the overthrow of
the monarchy and serve as a national guard to safeguard the emerging Islamic
revolutionary government. It quickly developed into a praetorian guard for the
country's supreme leader, also known as the Pasdaran-e Enghelab, or
"Guardians of the Revolution." In the force’s earliest days it
prevented a counter-revolution by the Artesh, the standing military under the Shah. In addition, the IRGC engaged in street
battles with competing revolutionary forces, such as secular leftists and
competing Islamist militias. With Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, the IRGC
emerged as a frontline conventional combat force in tandem with the national
military. By 1982, they had stopped the
attack by Saddam Hussein, but the war continued for another six years. Many
current IRGC commanders were young soldiers or officers at the time, and
experienced firsthand how Iraq deployed chemical weapons against them while the
West remained silent.
When Saddam Hussein
backed Iran's Kurdish rebels in 1980, the IRGC also became a counterinsurgency
force. It has suppressed various internal ethnic rebellions, ranging from a
Kurdish revolt in the northwest that began in the 1980s to a Baloch insurgency
in the southeast in the 2000s.
Trump’s recent
attempts to foment Kurdish revolts will therefore likely meet with profound
wrath from IRGC commanders, who have been fighting these ethnic rebel groups
for decades.
Lessons from proxies
The IRGC has
extensive experience in prolonged wars of attrition against Israel and the
United States thanks to its regional proxies. In 1982, the IRGC created a
foreign expeditionary force, known as the Quds Force. The Quds, whose name comes from the Arabic
word for Jerusalem, backed Hezbollah's establishment in Lebanon in response to
Israel's invasion of that year to drive out the Palestine Liberation
Organization. The IRGC was able to confront Israel with its proxies from that
point on. Over the course of 18 years, Hezbollah wore down the occupying
Israeli forces, who withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, by employing
strategies like suicide car bombings. The operation was widely regarded as an
Israeli military failure. These tactics were repeated after the 2003 US
invasion of Iraq, when Quds-backed proxy Shi’a militias, such as Kataib
Hezbollah, targeted the US military deployed there with improvised explosive
devices. In 2011, the United States
withdrew from Iraq in an effort to escape a "forever war." In the
event of a US invasion, the IRGC will undoubtedly seek to replicate the lessons
learned by the Quds' proxies in Lebanon and Iraq. While many of these
strategies can deter an immediate, high-intensity ground invasion, they were
designed to weaken an occupying force. However, the United States may find
itself engaged in yet another prolonged occupation and low-intensity war if it
fails to achieve its (at the moment, unclear) objectives. If it does, the
IRGC’s well-honed attrition tactics will be deployed extensively.
Iran, the US and the
“Axis of Evil”
The 9/11 attacks in
2001 compelled Iran and the United States to form a brief alliance against the
Taliban in Afghanistan, ending decades of tension between the two countries.
Iran’s regime even reached out to the US in late 2001, offering help to fallen
pilots who landed on Iranian soil while combating their mutual enemy.
But in January 2002, George W Bush placed Iran alongside Iraq and North Korea in the now-infamous “Axis of Evil”, making them a target in the US’ War on Terror. This marked a sudden shift in public perceptions of the United States for Iran. The reformist president Mohammad Khatami’s efforts at rapprochement ended. Three years later, the regime supported the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner who, along with the Supreme Leader, invested in both the expansion of the nuclear program and the IRGC. Since then, the Islamic Republic's IRGC has evolved to perform a variety of security responsibilities.
The only subsequent period of detente between the
IRGC and the US was when the Quds Force fought against the Islamic State in
2014 in Iraq, in tandem with US air support.
During the Obama administration, the United States entered into a
nuclear agreement with Iran a year later, from which Trump withdrew just two
years later in 2017. As a result, the IRGC interpreted the ISIS terrorist
attacks on its bases at the beginning of February 2019 as the result of covert
US actions. It blamed the US and Israel, in addition to a rise in Balochi and
Kurdish subversion.
In the IRGC’s
narrative, the Trump administration’s current war is part of a systemic
American effort since the 1980s to attack the IRGC through proxies or economic
warfare in order to weaken the Islamic Republic. They view this as a conflict that has existed
ever since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Protecting power
The IRGC has been, without a doubt, weakened by the past month of US-Israeli aerial attacks. However, its history reveals a pattern of officers with a distinct corporate identity who will defend institutional power even if their leadership is eliminated. This explains why, after Khamenei’s death, the IRGC rallied behind his son Mojtaba to keep its power intact. The IRGC presented a united front in support of Khamenei's regime, even as some Iranians celebrated and others mourned his passing. The IRGC would lose its status as an internal group if Iran's political system broke down.
The IRGC has also evolved to operate as a business
network. It controls at least 20% of the
economy with holdings in the service sector, including media and construction.
Given how some IRGC leaders have benefited from corrupt practices in managing
these networks, they would fear being held accountable and tried by a new
political order, and will not countenance the idea of surrender.
In the end, this
privilege network represents a deep state. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps
(IRGC) is not just an army; rather, it is a separate, vast, and independent
military organization that has remained in power despite Khamenei's
assassination. If past events and the ongoing conflict are any indication, it
will fight until the very end rather than give in.
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