Explainer | Who are Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and what is their role in the crackdown on protesters?
Reporting directly to Ayatollah Khamenei, this ‘empire within an empire’ wields immense wealth, intelligence, and suppresses dissent
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, is the ideological arm of Tehran’s military, answering to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and stands accused by Western countries of orchestrating and perpetrating the crackdown on protesters.
Who are they?
The Guards, known as “Pasdaran” in Persian, were founded in 1979 by then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “to propagate the ideas of the Islamic revolution”, said Clement Therme, a researcher at the International Institute of Iranian Studies.
“It’s an army of 150,000 to 180,000 people in service of an ideology.”
A Western diplomat who requested anonymity to speak said its membership was thought to be around 200,000.
“It’s an armed force that functions like an elite military with terrestrial, maritime and aerospace capabilities, while it is better trained, better equipped and better paid than the regular military,” the diplomat said.
The IRGC also serves as Tehran’s link to its regional allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iran militias in Iraq.
Its leadership is entirely appointed by the supreme leader.