Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a powerful force within the country’s theocracy, answering only to its supreme leader.
The IRGC is responsible for overseeing Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and launching attacks overseas.
The force is now in the spotlight as Iran regroups under its new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The country has been widening its attacks across the Middle East, ostensibly targeting U.S. bases in the region, since the start of a U.S.-Israeli campaign that killed the previous Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
Here’s what to know about the Revolutionary Guards.
By Tuesday, a mural had been set up on Tehran's Valiasr Street showing the transition of power between Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, left, who died in 1989; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, middle, who died this past Feb. 28; and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the country's new Supreme Leader.Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Born out of a revolution
The IRGC rose out of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force to protect the government – overseen by Shia clerics – and later became enshrined in the constitution. It operated in parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Ayatollah Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise.
The IRGC runs a massive construction company called Khatam al-Anbia and has firms that also build roads, run ports and telecommunications networks and even offer laser eye surgery.
There are tributes to the late General Qassem Soleimani in several countries where the IRGC branch he led, the Quds Force, has worked. At top is a mural in Najaf, Iraq; at bottom is a bust in Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold in the suburbs of Beirut.Anmar Khalil and Hussein Malla/AP
Foreign operations are key for the IRGC
The IRGC’s expeditionary Quds Force was key to creating what Iran describes as its “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States.
It backed former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and other groups in the region, growing in power in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
U.S. officials say the IRGC taught Iraqi militants how to build and use deadly roadside bombs against U.S. troops there. And the Quds Force, as well as Iranian intelligence agencies, are believed to have hired criminal gangs and others to target dissidents and Iran’s perceived enemies abroad.
Since the latest Israel-Hamas war, Israel has arrested citizens it has accused of receiving orders from Iran to surveil targets or conduct vandalism. Iran has denied being involved in those plots.
The IRGC is also believed to be heavily involved in smuggling throughout the Middle East.
Israel's Iron Dome air defences intercept missiles over Tel Aviv in June, 2025. In the first days of last year's missile exchange, Israeli strikes killed several top generals in the IRGC.Leo Correa/The Associated Press
IRGC’s intelligence arm is tied to arrests of foreigners
The IRGC also operates its own intelligence services and has been behind a series of arrests and convictions of dual nationals and people with Western ties on espionage charges in closed hearings.
Western countries say Iran is using those prisoners as bargaining chips in negotiations, particularly over its nuclear program.
War with Israel puts new pressure on the IRGC
The IRGC’s “Axis of Resistance” faced its greatest challenge in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. The Palestinian militant group is among those backed by Iran. Israel is still battling Hamas in Gaza, even as it has decimated Hezbollah and repeatedly targets the Houthis in Yemen.
When the Assad government in Syria fell in December, 2024, Tehran and the IRGC lost a key ally.
In June, Israel launched a massive air campaign targeting Iran. In its first day, air strikes killed top generals in the IRGC, throwing the force into disarray. Israeli attacks also destroyed ballistic missile sites and launchers, as well as IRGC-manned air-defence systems.
A protester with her face painted in Iranian colours rallies at Iran's consulate in Istanbul on Jan. 11.Yasin AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images
Crackdown on recent protests
In Iran, one of the main ways the theocracy can squash demonstrations is through the Basij, the IRGC’s all-volunteer arm.
Videos from protests that began Dec. 28 show Basij members holding long guns, batons and pellet guns. Their forces have been seen beating protesters and chasing them through the streets. One well-known Basij commander even went on state television to warn parents to keep their children at home as he called for the force’s members to assemble to put down the demonstrations.
In January, the European Union listed the IRGC as a terrorist organization because of Tehran’s bloody crackdown on the protests.
Leadership of the IRGC has passed to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, whose face was on these posters at a religious bazaar in Tehran on Tuesday.Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Mojtaba Khamenei’s connection to the IRGC
Mojtaba Khamenei is thought to have formed a strong connection to the force when he was a teenager during the Iran-Iraq war. The IRGC reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, and his ties give him leverage across the state’s political and coercive security institutions.
“He has strong constituency and support within the IRGC, in particular amongst the younger radical generations," said Kasra Aarabi, head of researching the IRGC at United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S.-based policy organization.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s website said Ali Khamenei had delegated some of his responsibilities to his son, who was said to have worked closely with the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force and the Basij “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
With reports from Globe staff and Reuters