Why the IRGC Is the War's Biggest Winner

Abstract: This essay argues that the true winner of Iran’s recent war is neither moderation nor democratic change, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Some observers, including U.S. president Donald Trump, have read the upheaval in Tehran as producing a more reasonable, less radical regime. In fact, the author contends, it marks the culmination of a decades-long transformation. Since its founding in 1979, the IRGC has evolved from revolutionary militia to military force, then to an ideological-security cartel and a “state within the state”—and now, under the pressures of war and a looming succession crisis, into something close to the state itself. Each crisis handed the Guard a new mission, new resources, and greater autonomy. The result is not a softening of the Islamic Republic but its hardening around its most coercive institution. Iran's future, the essay concludes, hinges on whether the IRGC remains cohesive.