Revolutionary Guard Corps Research Articles

The Role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Future of Democracy in Iran: Will Oil Income Influence the Process?

Iranians have experienced some democratic movements during the last fifteen years, but they did not succeed in establishing democracy in the country. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has increasingly played an undeniable role in different fields of Iran's society, particularly after the war with Iraq in the early 1990s. Additionally, Iran's political economy, based on oil revenue, helped the center of power to support the IRGC and the government. In this article, we discuss about the relationship between the government and IRGC, and moreover we conclude that this condition plays an obstacle role for democracy in Iran.

The Role of Iran in the Failed Coup of 1981: The IFLB in Bahrain

In December 1981, a group baptized al-Jabha al-Islamiyya li Tahrir al-Bahrayn [The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain] unsuccessfully attempted to carry out a coup d'etat in Bahrain. The group published newsletters and books in which it described its attempts to overthrow the Al Khalifa ruling family and install Iranian-style Islamic rule instead. These documents provide evidence for the group's involvement with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and of the support the Iranian regime provided for their activities against the Bahraini government.

Economic Involvements of Militaries

Middle East militaries can be arrayed along a continuum from more to less involvement in national economies, albeit with a few outliers. At the maximum engagement end are Egypt and Iran. In both countries, as in Pakistan, one can reasonably refer to the existence of a “Military, Inc.” The Egyptian Ministry of Defense and its subordinate Ministry of Military Production preside over a sprawling economic empire that directly owns companies active in the industrial, agricultural, construction, telecommunications, and service sectors. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps presides over a similar economic empire that has particularly strong positions in the oil field service, construction, port operation, and media and telecommunications sectors. Both countries also have what might be described as parallel “officer economies.” These have come into existence as a result of officers, many of them retired, capitalizing on their regime connections by gaining ownership of privatized state-owned enterprises or by forming companies that thrive on state contracts. These two military economies are subject neither to the effective oversight of legislative or nonmilitary executive authority nor to the scrutiny of civil society, including the media. Both provide essential patronage resources to ensure the loyalty of their officer corps. And in both countries, military preparedness and overall capacities suffer as a result of preoccupation with the management of and benefits from military economies.

The Militarization of Post-Khomeini Iran: Praetorianism 2.0

On June 4th of every year since 1989, the Islamic Republic of Iran holds a grand memorial to honor the passing of its founder, Ayatollah Khomeini. In 2010, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IR...

The Ayatollah's Praetorians: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the 2009 Election Crisis

One of the central questions of the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election crisis has been the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This article argues that what we are witnessing goes beyond the institution of the IRGC to the unmasking of a new faction in Iranian politics, which has been overtly (through elections) and covertly (through penetration of state institutions and the economy) transforming power in the Islamic Republic of Iran since at least 2003. The Roman Emperor Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) created the Praetorian Guard from among the best and most loyal legionnaires to protect himself from the machinations of generals in the provinces. In time, the Praetorians became a power unto themselves, installing and removing emperors at will. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) today is witnessing the coming of age of its own Praetorian Guard. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), tasked by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to defend the new regime from its foes after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, has outgrown its original role into a vast social-political-economic-security complex.1 The rise of the IRGC has been the subject of much debate since the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, an ex-Basij2 member with ties to the IRGC, to the presidency in 2005. The 2009 Iranian presidential election crisis, in which the organization was visibly involved, has raised even greater questions about its role in the polity. Yet the literature surrounding this phenomenon has failed to provide a simple and accurate framework for understanding the IRGC's ideology and goals and their methods for realizing them.3 This article introduces two concepts that provide such a framework. First is the idea of the Neo-Principalists,4 the political manifestation of the IRGC's leadership that first entered politics in the 2003 City and Village Council elections as the Abadgaran-e Iran-e Islami [Developers of Islamic Iran]. Although they have been closely allied with the Principalist faction in Iranian politics, we show that they are in fact a new faction with a distinct ideology and goals that represent a direct challenge to the established order. Second is the idea of the Coup d'Etat, the Neo-Principalists' strategy of simultaneously taking power by overt electoral and covert coercive means. Their election to political office in the 2003 City and Village Council elections, 2004 Majlis [Parliament] elections, and 2005 presidential elections has been paralleled by their covert penetration of the economy and state institutions. The election crisis is the most visible step in the Masquerade Coup; the perception that the Neo-Principalists have committed electoral fraud and are seizing power has created a popular opposition movement against them. Consequently, they have been forced to show their hand and accelerate the completion of their seizure of power in a manner that has resembled more closely a traditional coup d'etat. This article sheds light on these two concepts, and how the processes they represent may reshape Iranian politics. First, we briefly highlight the main political factions of the IRI since 1979, namely the Islamic Right/Principalists and the Islamic Left/Reformists, to set the entry of the Neo-Principalists in context. Second, we will look at the origins of the Neo-Principalists in the IRGC as an institution, starting with the Guard's beginning as a pro-Khomeini militia in 1979. We follow the IRGC's transformation into a social and military force during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), expansion into the economy during the era of President Hashemi-Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and emergence as the dominant domestic security organ and a political force in the era of President Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005). Third, we shift the study from a historical overview to an analysis of the Neo-Principalists, identifying their ideology and goals. The fourth section attempts to unpack the Masquerade Coup. Although the IRGC has arguably been expanding its role in the IRI since its inception in 1979, we focus on the period from 2003 to the election crisis in 2009 when the Neo-Principalists emerged as a distinct faction. …

US presses ahead with Iran sanctions

As part of its effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the United States is seeking to tighten sanctions on it. The US has tabled a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would place heavy restrictions on Iran's nuclear industries, military procurement and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Meanwhile, the US Congress is close to finalising its own bill expanding sanctions on Iran, including on energy companies with significant interests there. In an apparent effort to stall sanctions, on 17 May 2010 Iran issued a Joint Declaration, with Turkey and Brazil, under which low-enriched uranium would be transported to Turkey for processing and returned as fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. The declaration has instead so far served only to accelerate US sanctions efforts.

Iran’s Peculiar Election: What Should “We” Do Now?

The recent presidential elections in Iran are noteworthy for several reasons. To begin with, the integrity of the voting is gravely in doubt. Indeed, the conduct of these elections was the most suspect ever in the troubled quarter-century history of voting in the Islamic Republic. There was cheating in both the first and second rounds, and this came on top of the deeper structural problems that afflict all elections under the Islamic Republic, including the unelected Guardian Council’s power to bar candidates as well as the capacity for electoral interference of such armed regime forces as the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia. Neither the official turnout figures nor the official returns can be trusted. The regime has probably inflated the former through deliberate undercounting of the voting-age population. The returns, meanwhile, reflect the vanishing of millions of votes cast for some candidates, while other contenders—notably the eventual winner, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmedinejad—had their totals padded with millions of fraudulent votes. As usual, unelected supreme leader Ali Khamenei claimed that every Iranian who went to the polls had in effect cast a “yes” vote for the Islamic Republic, its constitution, and even for the supreme leader himself and his actions. Yet these results confer no legitimacy on anyone, and instead should be a source of extreme embarrassment for Khamenei in both Iran and the world at large. As revealed even by the dubious official results of the first round, the biggest single group of Iranians are those who want to change the conMohsen Sazegara, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, held several official posts in the Islamic Republic until his resignation in 1989. Barred by Iran’s unelected Guardian Council from running for the presidency in 2001, and then jailed for a time in 2003, he has been campaigning for a free referendum through which Iranians can choose a new constitution.