Explainer: What is the IRGC?

What the “I” in “IRGC” stands for 

Many Aus­tralians mis­tak­en­ly believe “IRGC” stands for the “Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps” but in fact it stands for the “Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps. The Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran’s For­eign Min­istry also refers to it as the “Army of the Guardians of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion”. 

Why the “I” matters

The dis­tinc­tion is impor­tant because the IRGC is not, and does not see itself as, a nation­al instru­ment of the Iran­ian state, but rather as a supra­na­tion­al instru­ment of the ‘Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion’. The IRGC’s pur­pose is to entrench the Aya­tol­lah’s theo­crat­ic rule in Iran and export Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion region­al­ly and glob­al­ly.

How the IRGC operates

Head­quar­tered in Iran as the first ter­ri­to­r­i­al ‘achieve­ment’ of the ‘Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion’, the IRGC has its own ground forces, navy, air force, and spe­cial forces, all par­al­lel to Iran’s con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary.

Giv­en the impor­tance of Iran and the fierce resis­tance of Iran­ian peo­ple against the rule of the Aya­tol­lahs, much of IRGC’s mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence oper­a­tions are focused on pro­tect­ing the ‘Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion’ and the Islam­ic Repub­lic. The IRGC also con­trols a vast eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al con­glom­er­ate, the reach of many parts of which – such as uni­ver­si­ties, media – span glob­al­ly.

The IRGC’s terrorist proxies

One of the IRGC’s 5 armed branch­es, the Quds Force, is respon­si­ble for oper­a­tions out­side Iran and sup­ports ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions such as Hezbol­lah, Hamas, Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, the Houthi move­ment, and Shia mili­tias in Iraq, Syr­ia, and Afghanistan.

It has led and car­ried out ter­ror­ist attacks, drug traf­fick­ing, cur­ren­cy coun­ter­feit­ing, cyber­at­tacks, and oth­er crim­i­nal activ­i­ties – not just in the Mid­dle East, but in coun­tries as far afield as Argenti­na, the USA, sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries, Thai­land, and Aus­tralia.

The US gov­ern­ment has flagged the IRGC-linked Al-Mustafa Uni­ver­si­ty as a recruit­ment ground for the IRGC’s Quds Force.

The IRGC’s goal

The goal of the IRGC is region­al and ulti­mate­ly world dom­i­na­tion for the “Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion” in the form of a glob­al theoc­ra­cy (caliphate) with final author­i­ty vest­ed in the ‘Supreme Leader of the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion’, cur­rent­ly Ali Khamenei. If the IRGC acquired nuclear arms, it would not be for the pur­pos­es of the Iran­ian nation, and cer­tain­ly not for defen­sive pur­pos­es.