Who are Iran’s Revolutionary Guards?

On March 6, the seventh day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, President Donald Trump demanded the “unconditional surrender” of Tehran. “There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender! After that, the selection of great and acceptable leader(s), we… will… bring Iran back from the brink of destruction…,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post. Soon after, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement that Iran was “fully prepared for a prolonged war”. Ever since the war broke out, the IRGC, an elite branch of Iran’s military, has emerged as the main pillar of the country’s resistance.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, who is reportedly acting as a bridge between the armed forces and the political class during the war, is a former IRGC soldier. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, had fought alongside the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq war and has maintained close ties with the Guards and their allies across West Asia, according to an official biography. Soon after Iran chose Mr. Khamenei as the new leader on February 8, the IRGC pledged its loyalty him.

Pillar of the system

The IRGC, or Sepah-e-Pasdaran, was one of the earliest revolutionary institutions decreed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1979 revolution that brought down the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. One of the main objectives of the Pasdaran was to preserve the revolution and the theocratic, constitutional system Khomeini and his followers built. The revolutionaries were wary of the loyalty of Iran’s regular Army that was commanded by royalists until the revolution. They wanted a fighting force that was completely loyal to the clergy. So they went on to build one. Khomeini described the Guards as “the soldiers of Islam”. “Wherever you be, guard yourselves against the self in you and from all the Satans around you,” he told Pasdaran after the group was founded.

The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 transformed Pasdaran into a powerful fighting force. The participation of ideologically driven Guards in the war, which ended in a ceasefire after both sides suffered heavy casualties, laid the ground for the IRGC to emerge as the most influential wing of the state. Today, the IRGC and Iran’s regular military (Artesh) operate as two parallel armed wings of the state. While Artesh and the police force are entrusted with protecting the country’s territorial integrity and order at home, Pasdaran’s primary responsibility is the protection of the revolutionary government. With a military wing, an overseas operational unit (Quds Force) and a civilian voluntary organisation (Basij) at home, the IRGC’s operations overlap with the regular service forces. But, under the direct command of the Supreme Leader, the Guards have the resources and capability to influence the direction of the foreign and security policies of the state more than any of its other wings.

Loyal Guards

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the IRGC has some 1,90,000 trained soldiers under its command, roughly half the size of Iran’s regular forces. The Guards have an Army, which is spread across Iran’s 31 provinces, an ‘aerospace force’ and a navy. It is the IRGC navy that patrols Iran’s maritime borders, including the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman that opens into the Arabian Sea and to the Indian Ocean.

At home, the Guards have made it clear that they remain steadfastly loyal to the clerical establishment. They have deeply penetrated into different institutions of the state and have stood against reformist politicians in the past, especially Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s President from 1997 to 2005. Abroad, the Guards’ responsibility is to neutralise the revolution’s enemies and expand the state’s influence. Its most elite wing perhaps is the Quds Force (Jerusalem Force), which has been tasked with this duty.

Though the Quds Force was formally established in 1988, Pasdaran, from its early days, had been operational in other parts of West Asia. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Guards set up a dedicated intelligence wing called ‘Department 900’ for its overseas operations. The department was later merged into the Special External Operations Department, and after the war, the Quds Force was formed. As its name suggests, “liberation of Muslim holy places from occupation” is one of the mandates of the Quds Force. From its inception, the IRGC has dedicated resources and energy to build Shia networks across West Asia. An Islamic Resistance group was founded in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of the country in 1982, which later became Hezbollah.

Axis of resistance

The Quds Force rose to prominence under Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who commanded the force from 1998 until his assassination by the U.S. in 2020. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the IRGC helped span Shia resistance against the occupying troops, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq. When the Syrian civil war broke out, the Guards immediately dispatched their troops to Syria, first under the pretext of protecting Shia holy sites in the country, and then to fight the regime’s enemies. The Guards, along with the Russians and Hezbollah, played a critical role in turning around the civil war in favour of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Assad’s regime would collapse in December 2024, in the midst of a regional war Israel was fighting against all of Iran’s allies in West Asia.

Iran’s allies are broadly called the ‘axis of resistance’ — Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories; Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and various Shia mobilisation brigades in Iraq and Syria. Iran also backs a Shia militant opposition movement in Bahrain. And if the axis has a command centre, it is the IRGC. The U.S. has designated the IRGC as a terrorist entity.

When the Guards look at the region, they see an Iran surrounded by rivals — across the Gulf, there are Sunni monarchies, American allies who host American bases; Syria, which used to be Iran’s only state ally in the region, is today ruled by a former al-Qaeda jihadist; on the borders of Lebanon, there is Israel, the ‘Little Satan’; and the U.S., ‘the Great Satan’, has thousands of troops and advanced weapons in several bases spread across West Asia. Beyond the Gulf waters, American warships and aircraft carriers are moving freely. The axis has been weakened in recent years, after Israel expanded its October 7 war against Iran’s allies. In June 2025, six months after the Assad regime fell in Syria, Israel bombed Iran, triggering a 12-day war. But it was only the beginning.

The Iranians knew a wider war was coming. On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched broad strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several others. For the IRGC, it was the fulfilment of a prophesy — an existential crisis. And they are fighting back with everything they have.

Published – March 10, 2026 04:22 pm IST