The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) (Sepaheh Pasdaraneh Enghelabeh Eslami) was originally constituted to protect the values and goals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran.[1] In 1979, it was a body answerable only to the new religious leadership of the fledgling Islamic Republic. The IRGC now defines its mission beyond the state of Iran itself, pursuing an international revolutionary ambition unmoored from the practical economic and diplomatic constraints of normal statecraft. This change created a strange paradox where the organization serves the deeply authoritarian state even as it shapes its behavior. This model of institutional capture is not unique to Iran and has been written about in relation to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and the Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security (KGB).[2] Whether or not other historical examples of institutional capture are perfectly comparable to the IRGC in Iran, understanding this phenomenon and the specific history is crucial to explaining and predicting Iranian state behavior. While individual personalities and realist concerns often dominate discourse about Iran, the reality is that the main driver of Iranian statecraft is the IRGC as an institution. Understanding the history and motivating ideology of this agency will provide the best prism for understanding how Iranian foreign policy should be interpreted by U.S. policymakers.
By understanding the ideological basis for the formation of the IRGC, its stated ideology, and the makeup of the organization, policymakers can glean a deeper understanding of its central role in the Iranian state and the direction in which it drives state policy. The unique history of Iran and the precarious nature of the state and revolutionary project have projected the IRGC to a unique place of institutional power. The IRGC is a deeply ideological organization, representing Ayatollah Khomeini’s conception of Iran as a global revolutionary project rather than a state constrained by zero-sum realist security calculations.[3] Iran’s clerical leadership relies on the IRGC to maintain its grip on the country and grants only nominal concessions of power to the civil government and institutions like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This thesis asserts that the infrastructure of the military and economic power that the IRGC has fostered in Iran is now so powerful that, even without the clerical leadership, it would likely be able to retain its central position in Iranian statecraft.
U.S. national security policymakers have been asking the wrong questions about the Iranian threat. At a glance, the divide between the two main camps is partisan. But on closer examination, it has more to do with ideological paradigms localized among the foreign policy elite that do not neatly map on to any political party. Some have argued that rapprochement is the only way to constrain Iran and constructively integrate them into the international system. In pursuance of this goal, some have supported negotiations with Iranian officials who are not at the locus of Iranian state power and who lack unilateral authority over Iranian foreign policy. Notable proponents of this liberal institutionalist worldview include alumni of the Obama and Biden administrations such as Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, John Kerry, Jake Sullivan, Susan Rice, and Robert Malley.[4]
To entirely neutralize the Iranian threat, some more hawkish elements have advocated explicitly or implicitly for regime change and have formulated this policy on the unlikely notion, in the author’s opinion, that the successor state would be more conciliatory towards the United States. The explicit camp includes foreign policy intellectuals like Ambassador Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh, while inside of government former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and subordinates like Brian Hook have advocated for behavioral changes to the Iranian state that amount to de facto regime change.[5] This perspective does not take into account the reality that the civil government leadership has precious little power within Iran’s system, and if they were removed, the most threatening institutions of the Islamic regime would be the most likely to endure. Any U.S. policy that seeks to mitigate the Iranian threat must be focused first and foremost on hampering the IRGC, denying its income streams, and loosening its grip on power within Iran.
Since 1979, Iran has regarded itself as a “Revolutionary State” with a global responsibility to end the oppression of the Earth’s marginalized people as well as Zionism and the perceived American hegemony underpinning it.[6] Members of the IRGC have become both the main avatars of and the chief lobbyists for the escalation of this revolution. It has transformed from a group of young Islamists to the most powerful political, military, and economic institution in the country.[7] As political elites have become more indebted to it for its ability to launder money placed under sanctions, the IRGC has continued to expand its proxy wars across the region, and it takes up a larger and larger share of state expenditures. Even in the face of a deepening recession in Iran and public outcry about the budgets of the IRGC’s Qods Force and its proxy organization, Hezbollah, the IRGC continues to dominate the definition and pursuit of state objectives.[8] If Iran’s current clerical leaders were no longer in power, Iranian statecraft would experience no fundamental change. The IRGC is so deeply entrenched in the Iranian state and society that if the United States enacted regime change, it would likely be a quick transition from theocracy to military dictatorship. The IRGC’s history, both ideological and institutional, gives a clearer picture of its present and future.
The IRGC was founded in 1979 through the consolidation of several Islamic militias participating in the revolution.[9] Ruhollah Khomeini, an Islamist Shia cleric who returned to Iran in the midst of the revolution, believed that having multiple competing security forces would leave his nascent government vulnerable to future coups. Because of this fear, he consolidated four major Islamist paramilitary organizations that had been active in the years preceding the revolution: the National Guard (Gard-e Melli), the Holy Warriors of the Islamic Revolution (Mojahedin-e Engelab-e Eslami) the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (Gard-e Engelab-e Eslami), and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into one organization under the aegis of the IRGC.[10]
Iran’s post-revolution government is a theocratic system with an elected civil government and military leaders, but these bodies are subservient to a clerical Guardian Council led by a supreme leader who exercises veto authority over the affairs of state as well as religious matters. The legal and institutional status of the IRGC within this theocratic system is not clearly elucidated as a legal matter, a fact that has repeatedly pulled the guards into political intrigue and intragovernmental disputes.[11] After the revolution, Article 150 of the Iranian Constitution defined the IRGC’s purpose to “guard the Revolution and its achievements.”[12] This investiture of power has led to the IRGC’s centrality both in fighting foreign wars and pacifying domestic dissent.[13] A mix of fundamentalist Shiism and revolutionary Marxism defined the IRGC then and continues to inform its actions today. The IRGC was sworn to uphold the Velayat-e-faqih (Guardianship of the Jurisprudent) and envisioned as the military arm of divine will. Guardianship of the Jurisprudent is a religious mandate elucidated by Khomeini himself. This concept is characterized by a belief in the earthly enforcement of divine will invested in an elite group who are the “guardians” of strict Shia Islamist principles in society. The revolution, as defined by Khomeini’s theology, is incompatible with a realist and pragmatist understanding of Iran’s place in the global order; it is necessarily hostile to status quo powers, particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
While the successors of Khomeini have occasionally strayed from this ideology and pursued reformist agendas, the IRGC has remained stalwart in its commitment to the ideological framework of the Islamic Revolution.[14] From the beginning, the revolutionary aims of the Islamic Republic and, by extension, the IRGC were explicitly global. In 1980 Ayatollah Khomeini, by then Supreme Leader of Iran, declared:
We must strive to export our revolution throughout the world, and must abandon all idea of not doing so, for not only does Islam refuse to recognize any difference between Muslim countries, it is the champion of all oppressed people… Know well that the world today belongs to the oppressed, and sooner or later they will triumph. They will inherit the earth and build the government of God.[15]
The IRGC’s transition from a paramilitary organization to a government bureaucracy led to the formalization of its command structure.At the top of the organization is the Supreme Leader of Iran, from whom all recognized state power flows. Subordinate to him is the IRGC commander-in-chief, a major general in the Iranian military, who manages the programmatic and strategic functioning of the organization. Under his authority are the commanders of the Qods Force (the IRGC’s special forces,) commanders of different military branches, the head of intelligence, the director of Khatam al-Anbiya (the IRGC’s construction company,) and the commander of the Basij Forces, (the IRGC’s domestic security militia).Almost all of these officials are uniformed members of the Iranian military at the rank of general or higher, with some exceptions.[16] Notably absent from this command structure is the Iranian president or any other member of Iran’s civilian government. The IRGC does not have even the pretense of civilian oversight or institutional restraint beyond the decrees of the supreme leader; it exists independently of both the Parliament and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Technically, the IRGC is not the primary intelligence organization of Iran. The Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) is invested with the constitutional authority for foreign intelligence gathering and espionage. Its duties broadly overlap with the IRGC and the Basij militias, bringing the organizations into competition and conflict. Prior to 1999, the MOIS were serious competitors with the Qods Force as a foreign legion. However, under the presidency of reformer Mohammad Khatami, the MOIS was purged of hardline supporters of its longstanding practice of assassinating foreign dissidents. By 2009, the MOIS boasted only 30,000 personnel, while the IRGC had 120,000 personnel plus an estimated 300,000 Basij militiamen.The symbiotic relationship that the IRGC developed with Iran’s hardline elite led to them having a deeper entrenchment in the political and economic affairs of the country, superseding the MOIS in importance.[17]
Understanding this transformation requires a historical exposition of the IRGC’s early development. Following the 1979 Revolution, Iran almost immediately entered a long, brutal war with the neighboring country of Iraq. Iran became locked in a battle for survival that necessitated a deep reliance on the IRGC to supplement its conventional military capabilities that had been ravaged by post-revolution purges.[18]
After the 1979 Revolution, Khomeini and his loyalists executed and exiled senior military officials and experienced military personnel and were ill equipped to resist the Iraqi invasion of 1980. For young Iranian men destined for conscription, the IRGC became an attractive destination for those seeking better pay and social advancement, and thus attracted some of the best and brightest Iranian youth.[19] Despite the fact that in 1983, the IRGC refused to accept the command of the regular army, Iranian political leadership increasingly relied on it as the war progressed.In 1980, the share of the Iranian military budget allocated to it was 7.3%. By 1982, this rose to 20.3%, and by 1987 almost half of the Iranian military budget was allocated to the IRGC.[20] The Iran-Iraq War was the formative event that established the IRGC as both a fiercely independent organization and one that the clerical leadership relied on heavily.
By the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, the IRGC felt the anger of the war-weary Iranian public and reformist political elites like Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s apparent successor. These elites held the IRGC accountable for its eagerness to engage in conflicts Iran had no chance of winning and that the regular army had counseled against at the cost of thousands of young Iranian men’s lives.[21] Mohsen Razai, a Major General serving as a commander the IRGC, was forced to publicly take blame for one of the war’s most embarrassing defeats.[22] The IRGC’s behavior defied the “rational actor” paradigm of state behavior and demonstrated the phenomenon of the elite as an “intervening variable” in rational state behavior and cost/benefit analysis.[23]
But when it seemed as if the organization was about to be disbanded and dissolved into the regular army, IRGC militants marched in uniform, fully armed, through the streets of Tehran. Montazeri was kicked out of the clergy, placed on house arrest, and replaced by Ali Khamenei, a radical junior cleric who succeeded Khomeini upon his death in 1989. Khamenei lacked support among the clerical class and, as Supreme Leader, invested an expanding amount of authority and influence in the IRGC to protect his own position.[24] Khomeini was a charismatic and commanding figure whose authority was never seriously challenged during his reign. Khamenei’s authority was not as absolute, and he needed the IRGC as the guarantor of his grip on power and his expansive view of the velayat-e faqih.[25] The message was clear: the revolution must be pursued at any cost, and the IRGC would root out all opponents of this revolution, foreign and domestic. The IRGC’s success was buttressed by its centrality to the ideological framework underpinning the Iranian state, and by its indispensability to the most powerful political elites in the country. This early success was further enforced by the IRGC’s development of Iran’s offensive capabilities. It was not through conventional military buildup and outright invasions of neighboring countries, but through the creation of proxy paramilitaries and institutional capture of neighboring governments.
The first group the IRGC cultivated for the purposes of proxy warfare was Hezbollah. It did this even as prosecution of the Iran-Iraq War amassed a significant death toll and financial costs.[26] Hezbollah, or “The Party of God,” was founded in 1982 in opposition to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.[27] Until the 1970’s, Lebanon was a mostly successful multicultural democracy, with Christians, Sunnis, and Shia Muslims living in relative peace. In 1975, the Maronite Christians of Lebanon, who disproportionately occupied the upper and middle classes, rejected Muslim demands for larger proportional representation in the Lebanese parliament, triggering a civil war. The opposition was originally ethnoreligiously heterogenous, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (Sunni), the Progressive Socialist Party (Druze), and Amal (Shia). In 1982, the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon changed this calculus for the remainder of the civil war.[28] The PLO was driven out of southern Lebanon, and Amal refused to submit to Iranian oversight and radical ideology. As a result, the IRGC developed a radical Shia militia parallel to Amal, known as the “Party of God” (Hezbollah). With arms, funding, and 1,500 IRGC instructors training soldiers in Baalbek, Hezbollah was able to expand rapidly, engage in hostilities with Israel, and establish itself as a political party following the end of the conflict.The IRGC perfected the art of proxy war in Lebanon, which it has replicated across the Middle East.
In just a few short decades, Hezbollah transformed from a ragtag extremist group to one of the largest political parties representing Shia Muslims in the Lebanese parliament.[29] It has marshalled popular support through violent campaigns against Israel and recruitment that focused on social justice for Lebanon’s sizable Shia minority. Hezbollah recruitment often targets young children and encourages a sense of loyalty in them both through ideological indoctrination and the provision of social services such as schools and hospitals that the civil government fails to provide.[30] Though Hezbollah is not formally a part of the Lebanese armed forces, it is so powerful that the state has no choice but to allow it to conduct cross border violence against Israel. Hezbollah fights the war with Israel that Iran cannot afford to wage directly for fear of inviting American involvement.
Hezbollah was the incubator for the expression of IRGC ideology outside of Iran. While the realist, hard-power benefits of developing such a group might seem obvious in retrospect, it was developed at a time when the nascent Iranian state was under significant military and economic pressure. The IRGC was not merely acting as a foreign legion, it was also acting as a domestic bulwark against any overtures towards reform or curtailing of its bellicose posture.
The IRGC’s use of asymmetric warfare allowed Iran to punch above its weight compared to its conventional warfare capabilities. After the United States invaded Iraq and upset the regional balance of power, the IRGC spearheaded the proxy war against them. This effort initially focused on the funding and training of Shia militias in the model of Hezbollah. As Middle Eastern security continued to deteriorate, this role expanded to encompass the IRGC’s presence in northern Iraq, a southern front against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, escalation of missile conflicts on Israel’s northern border, and the subsidization of the Assad government in Syria. These conflicts can be viewed through the realist, hard-power concerns of the Iranian state. However, Iran’s proxy battles are also deeply reflective of the IRGC’s revolutionary ideology and are often undertaken without respect to their onerous costs or strategic soundness.
After Khomeini’s death and Khamenei’s ascension to the supreme leadership, the presidency was occupied by reformers.[31] Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, elected in 1989, was a conservative technocrat who advocated for non-confrontation with the West. He tried to pacify the IRGC by offering it an expanded role in the economy, through state contracts to its construction company, Khatam al-Anbiya. This overture backfired horribly; it resulted in the indispensability of the IRGC with no appreciable moderation of its behavior. His successor, Mohamad Khatami, was another reformer who advocated for the liberalization of the country and normalization of relations with the West. When his social reforms created a permissive environment for student protests in 1999, the IRGC brutally pacified them without the president’s approval and IRGC commanders signed on to an open letter critical of reformist policies and hinting at insurrection. For the rest of Khatami’s presidency, the IRGC rooted out domestic dissent–contrary to Khatami’s reformist impulses–and began openly asserting itself in electoral politics.[32] In 2004, 91 former IRGC members won election to parliament, and in 2005 the IRGC openly backed the presidential candidacy of Tehran’s conservative mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was rumored to be a former IRGC or Basij militia member.[33] This successful candidacy cemented the IRGC as the primary broker of political power within Iran. Throughout successive rulers in the civil and theocratic authority, the IRGC has remained the central institution shaping the contours of Iranian engagement.
Political scientist Ali Alfoneh expands on this theory, arguing that Khamenei is a “prisoner of his own praetorian guard.”[34] Alfoneh argues that the guards originally existed in symbiosis with the clerical elite, invested with power by them to protect them from domestic and internal threats so that the latter group could rule. However, the Supreme Leadership’s disproportionate reliance on them to repress internal threats has led to an IRGC that can independently administrate the Iranian state and generate revenue.[35] The IRGC and subordinate Basij militia have taken a broad and ever-expanding view of the enemies of the revolution and have fostered a parallel bureaucracy in Iran’s provincial regions.[36]
In the 2000s, the IRGC fully dispensed with the appearance of being apolitical, running former members as political candidates and intimidating and publicly shaming reformers running for office. This expansion of the IRGC’s political and economic power acts as an effective check on popular uprisings from regime critics including liberals, feminists, and labor groups, but it has also alienated traditional regime allies like merchant classes hoping for economic liberalization and reformist elites hoping for a less bellicose regional stature.[37] This expansion of power means that the reliance of the supreme leader on the IRGC as a guarantor of his power has compounded itself, and the power dynamic between the two has become increasingly lopsided in the IRGC’s favor.
While there is little evidence suggesting that the IRGC desires to dispense with the Supreme Leader, the idea that it could if it wanted to should give U.S. policymakers pause. The civil government that the United States negotiates with exerts power only on the approval and at the pleasure of the Supreme Leader. Yet the Supreme Leader stays in power only through the infrastructure of repression managed by the IRGC. Both the desire to negotiate with Iran and the hope for regime change should be tempered by an understanding of the institutions and internal power dynamics that undergird the regime, as well as the deeply radical ideologies that guide the most ascendant faction in that struggle. Understanding Iran through realist terms and ignoring the intricacies of its theocratic state and cultural history is inadequate to fully understanding its international behavior.
Perhaps understanding Iran as a theocracy is incomplete as well. When the power of the theocratic elite rests so heavily on a military elite, particularly one that carries out much of the functional administration of statecraft and directs policy, it is plausible that the nation could transition into something resembling a military dictatorship. This possibility is grim news for policymakers who believe that negotiation with Iranian civil authorities will meaningfully affect their foreign policy, and perhaps even worse for those who believe that removing Iran’s theocratic leadership will speed the state’s “natural” progression towards liberal democracy.
The past and present of the IRGC give an imperfect but informed picture of its future. Stretching out the time horizon, several phenomena seem likely: first, the worse U.S.-Iran relations become, the more influential the IRGC will become as an institution. Second, any domestic unrest within Iran will likely expand elite reliance on the IRGC, creating a feedback loop for more unrest as the IRGC takes up a larger share of the national budget and continues to block economic liberalization. Third, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen will remain unstable and in Iran’s orbit of influence for as long as the current regime exists, absent a change in U.S. policy. Fourth, the IRGC will likely seek to expand this orbit of countries where it has paramilitary assets or subordinated local governments. Fifth and finally, the death of Supreme Leader Khamenei will be a crucial crossroads for Iran and the IRGC’s role in it.
These predictions are based on a historical analysis of the IRGC and the very idiosyncratic ideology which undergirds it as an institution. For the first claim, the basis of the IRGC’s existence is rooted in the belief in a global struggle against corrupt, imperialistic forces. The more bellicose relations with the United States become, the more this abstract struggle becomes a practical existential matter. Genuine concern about an upcoming conflict encourages investment in and deference to the security apparatus of any country; Iran is no exception. Since the IRGC has always favored the escalation of this conflict, at least in regional proxy wars, it will likely seize the opportunity presented by growing tensions to further entrench itself in the Iranian political system.
Related to the escalation of conflict is the second point, projecting the opportunity that potential domestic unrest within Iran could present for the IRGC. Political elites across the ideological spectrum in Iran are threatened by dissent that advocates for fundamental changes to the political system. If protests grow into riots, and riots into mass insurrections, the clerical leadership, civil government, and military could all become targets for violence. The Basij will be instrumental in pacifying any domestic uprising related to Iran’s economic woes. This means that the Iranian political elite will be further indebted to the IRGC for their lives and livelihood, which can only strengthen its negotiating position as an institution jockeying for power within Iran. What is less clear is whether the Artesh will side with the clerical leadership and the IRGC in the event that the uprisings become too large for the Basij to pacify. The Artesh receives far less funding proportional to the IRGC, and its members are likely less insulated from the economic hardship of average Iranians.[38]
The third and fourth predictions are a simple reflection of the steady advance of the IRGC regionally since 1979, consistent with its founding principles and the strategy it developed in Lebanon in the 1980s. The conflicts in these countries are endogenous, but the IRGC has a demonstrated aptitude in bolstering the strength of Shia and Shia-aligned parties in local conflicts, prolonging and exacerbating them. It is not the sole cause of regional instability, but it is very skilled at capitalizing on it. The IRGC will continue to develop paramilitary organizations and attempt to coopt local political establishments for as long as it is able in as many countries as it can. What the United States does about this depends on whether it assesses the expansion of Iranian influence and destabilization of neighboring countries to be a vital American interest. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiations did not stop or even slow down IRGC regional proxy warfare, and there is little reason to expect a change in this trend absent the collapse of the regime, its complete economic insolvency, or the dissolution of the IRGC.
Finally, the old age of Iran’s supreme leader–who as of the date of this publication has not identified a successor in the event of his death or incapacitation–will likely become a test of the IRGC’s hold on the country’s institutions. Though the relationship between Khamenei and the IRGC is not as hierarchical as it might appear from the formal power structure of the Iranian state, the Supreme Leader is still an important source of legitimacy for the IRGC. If there were a succession crisis, there is no guarantee that Khamenei’s successor would be as amenable to state-funded IRGC adventurism or as devoted to their vision of Velayat-e-faqih. Though Khamenei has not been an impartial judge in mediating institutional competition within Iran, he is still an important unifying force in keeping that competition from causing instability. The vacuum created by his death could lift the barrier between the IRGC and its enemies within the Iranian elite and cause more instability than even a popular uprising. The IRGC is well situated to win a domestic conflict, but it isn’t clear what the Iranian state would look like after this. Would the IRGC install a puppet Supreme Leader or simply rule the state outright as a military dictatorship? Would it be able to hold power in a post-Khamenei Iran, or would the last vestiges of the state’s legitimacy be exhausted? The supreme leader’s death could pass without incident, but it will likely thrust Iran into a period of severe political flux, when persistent questions of the country’s economic hardship, belligerent global posture, and the IRGC’s role in the country’s politics will have to be answered.
The policies that the United States decides to pursue in response to any and all of these developments are dependent on the assessment of the U.S. national interest. It is possible that, after 20 years prosecuting the Global War on Terror, a future administration will decide that the Middle East is no longer a region of vital national interest and that preventing Iranian regional hegemony is not worth risking another war. A future administration might decide the opposite and determine that preventing Iranian nuclear breakout merits a direct invasion of the country. Most likely, U.S. policy for the foreseeable future will be somewhere in between these extremes: fighting Iranian regional proxies, harrying Iranian attempts at uranium enrichment, and using sanctions and sanctions relief as a stick and carrot. For this policy to be consistent and effective, it must focus on how best to isolate and disempower the IRGC. Viewing Iran through a monolithic, realist framework divorced from history and cultural context will be a disaster for informed, nuanced regional policy. U.S. policy—whether rapprochement, regime change, or the likely middle path—should be clear-eyed about where the locus of power in the Iranian state truly is, and what this means about its intentions as an international actor.
Cameron Keyani spent three years as a federal contractor on an FCPA investigation team and currently works as an Anti-Money Laundering Associate for Morgan Stanley, with a focus on heavily sanctioned jurisdictions. He is a Washington D.C. native, alumnus of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and was fellow in the 2020-2021 Security and Strategy Seminar Iran track.
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Image: Ali Khamenei with the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij-Mashad, from Khamenei.ir.Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ali_Khamenei_with_the_Revolutionary_Guard_Corps_and_Basij_-_Mashhad_(10).jpg, used under Wikimedia Commons.
[1] Roozbeh Shafshekhan and Farzan Sabet, “The Ayatollah’s Praetorians: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the 2009 Election Crisis,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 64, No. 4, Autumn 2010, p 543.
[2] Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence: Secrets to Policy (Washington DC:CQ Press, 2016) p 539.
[3] Robert Litwak, Iran’s Nuclear Chess: After the Deal, Wilson Center Press, 2015, 43-44.
[4] Robert Lieber, “Biden, Iran And The Middle East: A Failure To Learn,” The Caravan, no. 2131 (15 June 2021). https://doi.org/https://www.hoover.org/research/biden-iran-and-middle-east-failure-learn.
[5] Ray Takeyh and Eric Edelman. “The Next Iranian Revolution: Why Washington Should Seek Regime Change in Tehran,” Foreign Affairs 99, No. 3 (May/June 2020); Michael Pompeo, Speech, After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy. Remarks delivered at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., 21 May 2018.
[6] Steven R. Ward, Immortal: A Military History of Iran and its Armed Forces (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007) 267-268; David Menashri, “Iran’s Revolutionary Politics: Islam and National Identity,” in Leonard Binder (Ed.), Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in the Middle East (Gainsville, FL: The University Press of Florida, 1999), 132.
[7] Matthew M. Frick, “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: An Open Source Analysis,” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 49, 2nd Quarter, 2008, 121.
[8] Elliot Hen-Tov and Nathan Gonzalez, “The Militarization of Post-Khomeini Iran: Praetorianism 2.0” The Washington Quarterly, Vol, 34, No. 1, Winter 2011, 45-59.
[9] Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, FDD Press, 2011, 1.
[10] Ali Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled: How the Revolutionary Guards Is Transforming Iran from Theocracy into Military Dictatorship, Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2013, 7-11.
[11] Ali Alfoneh, “The Revolutionary Guards’ Role in Iranian Politics.” Middle East Quarterly 15, no. 4 (2008): 3–14.
[12] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 6.
[13] Alfoneh,”Revolutionary Guards’ Role in Iranian Politics” 3-4.
[14] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 5-16.
[15] Hamid Algar, Islam and Revolutionary Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1941-1980)(North Haledon, NK: Mizan Press, 1981), 286-287.
[16] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 75-79.
[17] Frederic Wehrey, David E. Thaler, Nora Bensahel, Kim Cragin, Jerrold D. Green, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Nadia Oweidat, and Jennifer Li. “Asymmetric Ambition and Conventional Reality: Iran’s Evolving Defense Strategy, Doctrine, and Capabilities,” In Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East, 39-80. RAND Corporation, 2009, 45-48.
[18] Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Al-Quds Force, and Other Intelligence and Paramilitary Forces, CSIS, 16 August 2007, 8-9.
[19] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 8-9.
[20] Maryam Alemzadeh, “The Informal Roots of the IRGC and the Implications for Iranian Politics Today”. Brandeis University Middle East Brief No. 130. August 2019, 3-7.
[21] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 31-32.
[22] Ward, Immortal, 301.
[23] G. Hossein Razi, “An Alternative Paradigm to State Rationality in Foreign Policy: The Iran-Iraq War.” The Western Political Quarterly 41, no. 4 (1988): 689-695.
[24] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 31-35.
[25] Litwak, Iran’s Nuclear Chess, 45.
[26] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 2.
[27] Imad Salamey, and Frederic Pearson, “Hezbollah: A Proletarian Party with an Islamic Manifesto – A Sociopolitical Analysis of Islamist Populism in Lebanon and the Middle East,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 18, no. 3 (2007): 416–38.
[28] Makdisi, Samir, and Richard Sadaka, “Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis”, Report, Ed by Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis World Bank, 2005, 59-67.
[29] Shimon Shapira, “The Fantasy of Hezbollah Moderaton,” Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 10, No. 2, May 23, 2010.
[30] Alexus G. Grynkewich “Welfare as warfare: How violent non-state groups use social services to attack the state.”
[31] Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled, 3-14.
[32] Ottolenghi, The Pasdaran, 32-37.
[33] Wehrey et al., The Rise of the Pasdaran, RAND Corporation, p 77.
[34] Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled, 38.
[35] Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled, 16-19.
[36] Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled 56-57.
[37] Alfoneh, Iran Unveiled, 31-38.
[38] Alemzadeh “The Informal Roots of the IRGC,” 3-7.