Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps: A State Within a State

Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press

Iran is a very complicated political entity, because it is, in a sense, both a conventional state but also the leader of a political-religious movement.

Thus Iran has two militaries. While the Iranian Army is a conventional force whose mission is to protect the country, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), known as the Pasdaran, is an independent ideologically driven military force of about a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.

The IRGC was founded in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution as a custodian charged with defending the Islamic Republic against internal and external threats, but analysts say it has expanded far beyond its original mandate. It is Iran’s primary instrument for exporting the ideology of the Islamic Revolution worldwide.

It protects the country’s Islamic system and preserves the power of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has used his tight control over the Revolutionary Guards to expand his power.

Commanders report directly to him. Iran’s president has little influence on their day-to-day operations.

The IRGC since 2007 also controls the paramilitary Basij militia, which has about 90,000 active personnel. It is an auxiliary force engaged in activities such as internal security, law enforcement auxiliary, providing social services, organizing public religious ceremonies, policing morals, and suppression of dissident gatherings.

Basij volunteers have a history of violently crushing riots in Iranian cities. After the contested 2009 Iranian presidential elections, for example, the Basij brutally quashed protests and attacked student dormitories.

The IRGC has its own air force and navy. In January 2016, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of its navy, which defends Iran’s offshore facilities, coastlines and islands, seized two American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf and briefly held the sailors captive.

It also has an elite unit known as the Quds Force (Jerusalem Force), a paramilitary arm with 10,000 to 15,000 personnel.

It has supported and armed militant groups across the Middle East and beyond, including Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf states, Egypt, Turkey, and Chechnya, according to the U.S. State Department.

The Taliban, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command are among those that the Quds Force has provided with material and financial support. It assists the Zaidi Houthis against al-Qaeda in Yemen.

It has been linked to various terrorist atrocities as far afield as Argentina, where it allegedly participated in the 1994 suicide bombing of an Argentine Jewish community center, killing 85 and wounding about 300. Two years earlier, a suicide bombing at the Israeli Embassy murdered 29 people and injured a further 242.

In the years since, the Quds Force has armed anti-government militants in Bahrain, and assisted in a 2011 assassination attempt on Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.

Iran has now appointed a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official and Quds Force adviser, Irad Masjedi, to be its new ambassador in Iraq, raising concerns that Iran plans to strengthen Iraq’s Shiite militias in the post-Islamic State era. Masjedi is close to Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

As well, the Iraqi militia Harakat al Nujaba in March announced the formation of its “Golan Liberation Brigade.” Does the name signal that the unit, which takes direct orders from Soleimani, could assist the Syrian regime in taking the Golan Heights, controlled by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin March 9 focused on keeping Iran from filling the vacuum in Syria.

Roughly 1,300 to 1,500 Iranians currently operate in Syria. In addition, there are the Iranian-funded Shiite militias, which number approximately 7,000 to 10,000 fighters who came from places as far afield as Pakistan and Afghanistan. And the Shiite fighters of Hezbollah -- approximately 8,000 soldiers on Syrian soil -- who take orders from Tehran.

The IRGC is also one of Iran’s most influential economic players, wielding control over strategic industries, commercial services, and black-market enterprises.

It has developed a shadow economy within Iran to fund its activities and expand its power. It controls all official border crossings and runs several unofficial ports, solely for its own use.

Some 90 docks have been taken over, using them to circumvent sanctions and fund terrorist activities in the Middle East and beyond.

It is linked to dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of companies that are run by its members, as a way of circumventing economic sanctions.

The Revolutionary Guard engages in smuggling oil, gas, chemical products, cigarettes, narcotics, alcohol, mobile phones, pharmaceuticals, hygiene material and energy drugs and supplements.

The importing and exporting of these illicit goods has allowed the IRGC to net $12 billion annually.

It controls Iran’s missile batteries and nuclear program. Many of the front companies engaged in procuring nuclear technology are owned and run by the Revolutionary Guards.

The U.S. Treasury Department has labeled the National Iranian Oil Company “an agent or affiliate of the Revolutionary Guards.”

Created in 1989, Iran’s Khatam al-Anbia (KAA) is an IRGC-controlled engineering firm that acts as its construction arm. KAA maintains more than 800 subsidiaries, collectively employing more than 40,000 people. Approximately 70 per cent of the firm’s business is believed to be military-related.

According to a recent report in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, Tehran has begun setting up rocket-manufacturing facilities in Lebanon and Syria, supervised by members of the IRGC.

The IRGC, through various companies, has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, as well as major infrastructure projects, in countries such as Azerbaijan. It is definitely a force to be reckoned with.