Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been much in the news in the past few years. They are at various times presented by Western media as a paramilitary force rampaging in a disorderly Middle East, entrepreneurial businessmen who may be useful allies of President Hassan Rouhani as he attempts to open up the economy, and a zealous ideological force helping Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his quest to sustain the Islamic Republic. A look at the Guards from their inception reveals that all of these descriptions bear a measure of truth and that the context of Iranian politics and the regional order have done much to condition the Guards' mission.

The Guards made their first appearance during the latter stages of the 1979 revolution that deposed the shah. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, did not trust Iran’s military and needed his own force as various factions and militias battled for influence in those chaotic days.

The unit was drawn from pious young men, mostly from working-class backgrounds. They were attracted by Khomeini’s mission of salvation and his quest to ensure God’s rule on earth. From the very beginning a strong ideological bent permeated the organization and sanctioned its view that violence was a justifiable response to the Islamic Republic’s detractors, both domestic and foreign.

Spear of the Islamic Republic

The Guards would likely have remained a small internal security force operating on the edges of the regime had it not been for the Iran-Iraq war. As often in history, wars make careers. And Saddam Hussein’s impetuous invasion of Iran in 1980 ultimately brought the Guards to a new height of power and prestige. The Guards proved daring if largely incompetent, especially early in the war. Their operating principle was that faith and commitment could overcome Iraq’s technological superiority. They oversaw mass attacks on Iraqi lines, whereby young men, some as young as twelve years old, were dispatched to walk across minefields and clear a path for the military. These suicide missions endeared the Guards to the clerical oligarchs who appreciated their zeal and tenacity at a time when the regular military was often cautious and deliberate. It was at this point that the Guards began their expansion in terms of numbers, funds, and weaponry.

The individual most responsible for the Guards’ emergence as current status was a pragmatist, President Hashemi Rafsanjani. He encouraged them to participate in postwar reconstruction after the conflict ended in 1988. Despite their struggles in the war, the Guards had developed engineering skills viewed as vital for rebuilding. They learned they could profit from this new role and soon front-companies—typically smaller firms not subject to outside sanctions—and other businesses directly responsive to the Guards started appearing.

While Rafsanjani was mainly a supporter of the Guards' role in rebuilding, the Supreme Leader backed their effort to assemble a potent security apparatus (see figure below). It was at this point that the famed Quds Brigade was created to forge the revolution beyond Iran’s borders. And the Guards began to develop their domestic surveillance arm and pay close attention to dissent within Iran. These efforts would make the Revolutionary Guards the most important single organization within the Islamic Republic, with their own corporate identity and corporate interests. Today, they number about 125,000.