The Sepah Pasdaran

The role of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has featured minimally in efforts to explain the country's internal political dynamics, and when it does feature, it  tends to be reduced to a hidden hand of the clerical establishment. This understanding of the IRGC is anachronistic, as external and internal factors have transformed the body into possibly the sole inheritor of Iran's future. The United States would do well to incorporate this into its wider Middle East Policy.

In attempting to decipher Iran’s hierarchy of power, there has always been some bewilderment concerning who are Tehran's decision makers. After the 1979 revolution ousted Iran’s former monarch, it was widely assumed that, given the country’s new name - the Islamic Republic of Iran - power would emanate primarily from the recently emboldened clerical establishment. However, Iran’s incipient political framework described itself as a “republic” with newly-formed offices such as the President and the Prime Minister (of which the latter has since been eliminated) being introduced to the nation. Concepts such as general elections, political parties, and the overnight rise of pious apparatchiks at times falsely portrayed the Iranian government as being some type of Islamic democracy.

The obscure nature of Iran’s power structure - often exploited by the establishment - ultimately explains the historical deportment of certain Western governments towards the Islamic Republic. As a result of contrasting internal political forces, the precarious nature of the country’s economy, and the danger posed by traditional threats like the United States, Iran has recently undergone a political evolution that may position it to be on the verge of a new era, not only in terms of domestic politics but also concerning its role internationally; a reality that will ultimately change the global perception of who in Iran wields power. 

As theulama (clergy) of Khomeini’s generation gradually meet their demise, only to be followed bya feeble and increasingly irrelevant group of new clerics, the tides of power within the Islamic Republic are saliently shifting in the direction of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, the primordial vanguards of Iran’s Revolution. This transformation will produce ramifications far past the Iranian borders yet, if met with a sensible approach by Western leaders, can actually alter the current Middle East realities for the better. 

The Edifice and its inner disparities

Following the 1979 revolution, a cogent hierarchal foundation was constructed that amalgamated both clerical and non-clerical institutions whose domestic and international objectives supposedly mirrored each other. Contrary to Western beliefs, no official position within Iran has ultimate power and in the brief history of the Islamic Republic there have often been clear power struggles within the government, as is the case today.

Most of Iran’s political authority, in its most rudimentary form, has conventionally been split amongst the Supreme Leader and the Council of Experts, with the office of the President and the Majles (Iran’s parliament) sharing what little remains. Even today, there is no clear chain of command, with many still debating whether it is influential but pragmatic clerics like Rafsanjani who have shaped government policy or if ideological conservatives such as the current Supreme Leader control the country’s affairs.

There have also been several instances in the last three decades that saw political figures from both the clerical and the non-clerical establishments voicing their dissent or advocating policies that were deemed contradictory to the official position of the Islamic Republic. These figures were subsequently purged from the establishment, reshaped into pariahs and barred from the institution that once empowered them. Instances of this phenomenon can be found in the cases of once highly influential figures such as Bani Sadr, Mohsen Sazegara, Hussein Khomeini, and even the once anointed heir to the office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Montazeri. The case of Montazeri is emblematic of the power game within Iran’s political arena. An instrumental figure in the Iranian Revolution who helped shape the constructs of the Islamic Republic, the elder Ayatollah was eventually marginalized both politically and religiously for daring to question the policies of the Islamic Republic in the mid 1980s. Today, the once prominent cleric resides in the Shia capital of Qom, distanced as a political leper, virtually under house arrest and unable to even publish religious literature.

The recent censoring of Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani’s memoirs is further evidence of the heterogeneous dynamic of Iran’s bureaucracy, even in the highest echelon of the Islamic Republic’s leadership. Arguably the most influential cleric in terms of the economy, the expurgation of such a prominent figure’s literary work demonstrates the constant sway of power and influence, revealing the vast internal contradictions and divisions within Iranian politics (for instance, those like the current president who follow a strict ideological interpretation of Khomeniism, compared with pragmatists like Rafsanjani, Khattami, and Montazeri who have usually placed Iran’s economic and security interests before philosophical persuasions).

The Fifth Column

With time, a subsidiary entity that spawned from 1979 began to exert its power within Iran’s political arena, and displayed a pervading influence over international, economic, and security affairs. Within the nation, they are known as the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami (literally - Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution). In the West, they are commonly referred to as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The IRGC was formed in May of 1979 as a group of Shia militants loyal to Khomeini and the office of the Supreme Leader. Iran experts have correctly labeled them as the “clerical regime's version of a Praetorian guard”, a buffer that has traditionally protected the establishment from hostile internal opposition and from any threat that Iran’s traditional military, the Artesh, may pose ¹.

When the war with Iraq began in the 1980s, the IRGC was incorporated into the nation’s armed forces, becoming a critical component of Iran’s defense effort against the invading Iraqis. By the time the war ended, the IRGC had consolidated its control of Iran’s border security and had embedded itself into the fields of intelligence and reconstruction efforts, securing billions of dollars in contracts from the government. As the Guard began to expand its operations due to its newfound economic empowerment, a vast intelligence, military, and internal engineering apparatus began to form, rivaled by no other entity in the nation. In the 1990s, the Guard even took control of Iran’s black market maze, reaping in billions per year from the sale of any and all embargoed goods including liquor (illegal under Iran’s Islamic law).

Now, the nation’s most vital defense mechanisms, which include key elements of Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s missile systems, are fully under the Guard’s dominion. Earlier this year, the fiscal irresponsibility of the clerics compelled the government to announce that it would privatize some of its national oil companies. Yet in Iran’s Islamic theocracy, privatization does not have the same definition as in the West (i.e. no open bids for contracts to either private domestic firms or foreign entities). Most economists in the country understood that the privatization would take place internally, and the fact is that the only domestic entity with the financial means to acquire these firms is the Guard.

Today, the Guard is an immense enigmatic labyrinth estimated to number anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 staff members consisting of highly-trained economists, engineers, military strategists, chemists, lawyers, special force reconnaissance units, and an espionage network rivaling Israel’s Mossad, America’s CIA, or Britain’s MI6. The Guard has its own Navy, Air and Army Units, and a law enforcement body known as the Basij, which is separate from the regular police and capable of coalescing up to 11 million troops, both for domestic or foreign operations.

This growth pattern has remained uninterrupted; where the political clout of the clerical establishment has been gradually eroding due to failed economic policies causing massive internal discontent, the financial and political prowess of the Guard has aggrandized; it has become a direct benefactor of both the futile domestic policies of the government and the international isolation that Iran has experienced. Whereas in the past the Guard had some degree of influence on internal and foreign policy, it has now begun dictating the agenda, especially after 9/11. From Iraq, to Syria and Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan and even overlooked Muslim nations such as Azerbaijan and Tajikistan (which are ethnically linked to Iran), the Guard has made successful strides in increasing Iran’s regional role and establishing a cogent defense mechanism.

Persia’s Rubicon

The common perception of the Guard in the West is that of an elite and well-funded military apparatus, loyal only to the Supreme Leader. Yet this overly simplistic characterization is not only outdated but also erroneous. Certainly there are many in the Guard that view Iran’s domestic policies and world outlook through the lens of Khomeiniism, yet it is no homogenous assemblage. Factionalism exists within the IRGC as well.

Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour has pointed out that “polls conducted at [Guard] barracks in 1997 and 2001 found that about three-quarters of members supported then-President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, evidence that the guard is actually more reflective of Iranian society -- and its discontents”. Further, contrary to Western notions, it was the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was forced to solicit the Guard’s support rather than being an unchallenged candidate who supposedly represented their interests ⁴. Furthermore, many senior commanders of the Guard reportedly supported fellow alumni Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Tehran’s current mayor, for president in 2005. Ghalibaf, while being undoubtedly in Iran’s conservative wing, is by no means an ideologue like the current president, favoring a more nuanced approach not only to Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West but also to several aspects of Iran’s foreign policy. Although many in the Guard are intertwined with and still pledge verbal loyalty to the clerical leadership, they have also taken advantage of the establishment’s many shortcomings, “assuming large civilian roles as Pakistani generals did before taking power from the country's civilian leaders in the 1990s: promising order, stability and prosperity” ⁵. Today, more than half of Iran’s Parliament consists of Guard alumni.

The most crucial point is the ever-increasing autonomous nature of the Guard. Poor economic management by the clerical leadership, constant power struggles, years of sanctions, and a profound dependency on the IRGC as the nation’s sole defense mechanism, has created a reality in which the Guard has now become an affluent, influential Goliath that has not only adopted Iran’s regional goals of dominance, but has also become the sole inheritor of its greater foreign policy, its nuclear program, and the only catalyst for any possible domestic political shift.

This new dynamic has not gone unnoticed by the Supreme Leader and his like-minded associates within the Guard. Where factionalism and verbal dissent has manifested itself, the government has attempted to further empower those who share its ideology within the IRGC and to marginalize those who arouse suspicions of divergence. At this point in the history of the Islamic Republic, it is simply improbable for the clerics to do away with the Guard for they are the only buffer that protects them from a disillusioned public. And yet the Guard is the only entity able to severally marginalize the clerics, both politically and economically, if conditions arose where its own financial and security interests were threatened.

Implications for Washington

Although the Guard was formed solely to defend the ideals of the Revolution, eventually this powerful, autonomous group may have to reconcile itself with the malfunctions of the Islamic Republic’s system, especially if the philosophical tendencies of the conservative ideologues, embodied in the current Iranian president, ultimately lead to the undermining of its own security or economic stature. Yet, there should be no delusional optimism with this assessment, for if the IRGC follows the Pakistani or Turkish examples in a quest to fully consolidate power over Iran, whether it is achieved by a soft-takeover or an all-out coup, it will not be motivated by any sincere effort to bring some semblance of representative government to the average Iranian or disabuse the spate of shortcomings within the clerical establishment. The Guard will be driven primarily by a desire to resuscitate a failing system whose deteriorating policies could very well lead to a disastrous internal collapse that from the Guard’s perspective would bring only pernicious consequences.

Consequently, Washington should no longer adhere to a “black and white” policy with the Iranian government, but attempt to understand the pluralism that exists within the clerical establishment and the Guard. The US should realize that the IRGC has gained virtual autonomy from the establishment and that it is solely devoted to itself and to the Guard’s objectives for the nation, some of which are clearly distinct from those of the clerics. Washington should no longer entertain or engage in the impractical funding of “opposition groups” that operate outside of Iran or give ear to their anecdotal suppositions on how to approach the nation. It should stop the sanctions and truly open diplomatic channels on the highest levels.

The recent designation of the IRGC as a “terrorist organization” will be another self-defeating policy that will continue to unite an otherwise unwilling group of disparate factions against a common threat, all of which will help solidify the ideological conservatives' hold on power. Too often, US policy makers defer to either best or worst case scenarios with Iran, not following the political trends, the shifting tides of power, unable to understand the personas and persuasions of each political figure, and, as a result, being completely oblivious to the motivations behind the actions of the Islamic Republic as a whole.

And if the current trend continues, Washington must not only reconcile with the power vacuum -- but also with who is likely to fill it -- for there is no other internal entity with the financial and military clout of the IRGC. At present, there seems to be potential for both progressive and militant outcomes in the aftermath of a future Guard assertion of power over Iran, yet if Washington were to realize the pluralistic nature of Iranian politics and revise its Middle East policy to meet the new realities, there is a high probability that it would witness a much more agreeable Iranian government. When examining the discourse and the political thought of pragmatic Guard commanders and their like-minded colleagues in the civilian leadership and even in the clerical establishment, the yearning for regional dominance by being included in the world economy and regional affairs is undoubtedly the most pervasive theme. This fact sits at a stark contrast from the naive portrayal of the Iranian political establishment by the current American administration and their advisors as irrational figures who hold fanatic, uncompromising global views.

It is incumbent upon Washington to abandon its long-failed policies of isolation, sanctions, military hostility, and efforts at regime change for a more nuanced approach that previously has worked with Mao Zedong’s China. However, if constant rhetoric about “funding democratic movements” or threats of war subsist, there can be no other result but an Iranian version of a Pinochet-style military dictatorship or some political apparatus resembling the Junta of Myanmar- ultimately perpetuating the precarious state of crisis within the Middle East.  ^{2 3}

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