Elite wing of Iranian army ready for action... with some dissenters
‘I’m scared now. The commander told us we should get ready. I don’t want to go to war with any country’
WHEN news of the Iranian strikes on Israel reached an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) base in the southeastern city of Zahedan, soldiers poured outside to celebrate.
As he witnessed his comrades’ euphoria, 24-year-old Abdul (not his real name) felt a different emotion.
“They were chanting ‘leader, we are ready, we are ready’ and a commander even brought sweets, saying ‘with the hope of liberating Palestine’ as he distributed them among us,” he said by telephone from his checkpoint.
“I’m scared now. The commander told us we should get ready. I don’t want to go to war with any country. All I want is to live and have a safe life,” he said.
His fears are not unfounded. If Israel chooses to retaliate for Iran’s April 14 rocket attack by striking targets inside Iran, it is IRGC facilities and the men serving on them that will likely be at the top of the target list.
And low-ranking members of the IRGC have been left in no doubt that war is a real possibility. Movement of heavy weaponry, including missiles and tanks, was also seen in the western part of the capital Tehran on Monday night following reports of an imminent retaliation strike by Israel.
Ahmad (also not his real name), another conscript in southern Bushehr, said he received a call from his base the same day, asking him to return to duty, despite having secured two weeks of leave to care for his ailing mother.
“We all know what the IRGC does in the region and if someone dares to respond we should just accept and try to answer by our guys in the region,” he added. “We fought for years in Syria and Iraq against ISIS so we do not fight against them in Tehran and Isfahan, I do not know what goes through the commanders’ minds, they’re needlessly bringing a war to us now,” he added.
The less-than-enthusiastic feelings among the rank and file reflect the complicated reality of life in Iran’s most notorious military force.
Founded after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend the new regime from internal dissent and balance the power of the formerly royalist armed forces, the IRGC, also known as the Sepah, is often portrayed as a single entity. But over the decades it has grown into a bloated, multi-departmental bureaucracy with a massive imprint on Iran’s military, economy and wider society.
“It is like a political party and a militia at the same time,” explained Arash Azizi, a historian at Clemson University and author of a book about Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC general assassinated by a US drone strike in 2020.
“It is a sprawling organisation that is united by [Supreme leader Ali] Khamenei at the top, but its very different factions have very different goals.”
Besides its military role, the IRGC runs domestic news agencies and has very large commercial interests, including in telecoms, construction and oil. Mr Azizi estimates around 60 per cent of the Iranian economy is in some way connected to the corps.
Its veterans have prominent political positions and it is basically in charge of foreign policy in the Middle East.
Tellingly, the Swiss chargé d’affaires, who represents the United States in Tehran, was summoned not to the foreign ministry but to IRGC headquarters following the April 14 attack.
All Iranian men who come of age at 18 are required to fulfil 21 months of compulsory military service in either the Iranian army or the IRGC.
Typically, the general staff of the armed forces of Iran determines the assignment of individuals.
But in practice, many young men find ways to get into the IRGC because it has a reputation for better pay and conditions than the official Iranian army, said Holly Dagres, curator of the Iranist, a weekly newsletter on Iranian current affairs. That is one reason Britain has resisted demands by Israel and many Iranian dissidents to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation: it risks criminalising large numbers of people whose loyalty to the regime might otherwise at some point be called into question.
Militarily, the IRGC is believed to field around 190,000 personnel, not including the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force affiliated with the corps. Ground forces account for about 150,000 of the total.
Its overseas Quds Force gains the most attention abroad and is responsible for coordinating the “axis of resistance” made up of groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.
Conscript Ahmad says he is struggling between a reluctance to fight, and a nagging sense of patriotic obligation to “defend” Iran. “My uncle lost his life during the war with Iraq and I think I should just follow him and defend Iran from aggressors, but I hope war does not happen. I just want to finish my service so I can get my passport and leave Iran with my mother,” he said.