What is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the group believed to be behind Iran’s attack on Israel?

When Israel reportedly struck the Iranian consulate in Syria’s capital Damascus last week, it killed 13 people, including two elite Iranian generals. Following the attack, Tehran had vowed to hit back at the Jewish nation.

And on Saturday night, it did exactly that when it launched an unprecedented attack — first from its soil — against Israel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) then said that it had launched “dozens of drones and missiles” towards military sites on Israeli territory.

Catch all the live updates from Iran’s strike against Israel here

“Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” the Iranian mission to the UN later said.

In fact, after the attack on Saturday, the IRGC said that its rain of drones and missiles had “achieved all its objectives”. “Operation Honest Promise… was completed successfully from last night to this morning and achieved all its objectives,” Mohammad Bagheri, the Iranian armed forces’ chief of staff, told state TV.

With this strike, the attention is back on the IRGC. Who are they? And more importantly, what role do they play in Iran?

Here’s what we know.

What is the IRGC?

The IRGC, also known as the Sepah-e-Pasdaran, was set up shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution . It is not to be confused with Iran’s traditional armed forces — it is a parallel military body.

It is charged with defending the Islamic Republic against internal and external threats and answers directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The force, over the years, has also become influential in domestic politics, with many senior officials having passed through its ranks.

The IRGC boasts of having 190,000 active personnel with army, navy and air units. It also commands the Basij religious militia, a volunteer paramilitary force loyal to the clerical establishment that is often used to crack down on anti-government protests.

In 2019, the United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

Why was the IRGC formed?

The IRGC was founded in the immediate aftermath of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s fall, as leftists and nationalists jockeyed to set the course of the revolutionary republic.

At the same time, the ruling clerics formed their own ideological military arm — the IRGC — to defend the 1979 revolution and its achievements. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies reports that this meant that the IRGC was given both a constitutionally legitimate existence and the legal right to become involved in the political scene in order to defend the revolutionary regime and its policies.

Iran’s founding supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, described the IRGC 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.

How is the IRGC organised?

Today, the IRGC is an integral part of Iran’s politics and military. It is considered as the dominant military force in Iran and is behind many of the country’s key military operations, including Saturday’s attack on Israel.

The IRGC also has an overseas arm known as the Quds Force, which heavily influences its allied militias across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq, Yemen and Syria. Its members have fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war and have backed Iraqi security forces in their battle against Islamic State militants in recent years.

Its top commander, Major-General Qassem Soleimani , was killed by the United States in a drone attack in Iraq in 2020 that raised fears of a major conflict.

The IRGC also has its own navy, which is tasked with patrolling the important Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply passes.

The IRGC’s air force is responsible for Iran’s missiles, which experts regard as the largest in the West Asia region. As per a Reuters report, the Guards have used the missiles to strike Sunni Muslim militants in Syria and Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in northern Iraq. The United States, European powers and Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for a 2019 missile and drone attack that crippled the world’s biggest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, though Iran denied any involvement.

The Trump administration also blamed the IRGC for the killings of 608 US troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Moreover, the IRGC’s Quds Force has been known to cultivate and support US-designated terrorist groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — by providing funding, training, weapons, and equipment.

What is IRGC’s role in Iran’s politics?

The IRGC’s popularity and close ties with Ayatollah Khamenei, has made it a key player in Iranian politics. In fact, several former IRGC officers occupy key positions in Iran’s political establishments, including President Ebrahim Raisi’s Cabinet.

The Council on Foreign Relations notes that because the IRGC marches in lockstep with the supreme leader’s policy positions, its powers at times seem to outshine that of Iran’s president, who does not control any of the armed forces and has relatively few powers of his own.

There are also reports that the IRGC intervened during the 2013 presidential elections. While Hassan Rouhani ultimately prevailed over hard-liners favoured by many guards, reports indicated that the IRGC created an atmosphere of intimidation ahead of the vote and pressured the Guardian Council, which vets candidates for their ideological suitability, to cull candidates they deemed unacceptable.

Additionally, the IRGC also plays an important role in Iran’s economics. It is believed to control around a third of Iran’s economy through a series of subsidiaries and trusts. According to a 2020 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the IRGC has become the most powerful controller of all important economic sectors across Iran.”

Charged with rebuilding infrastructure destroyed in the Iran-Iraq War, the Guards since then has expanded into many other industries, including banking, shipping, manufacturing, and consumer imports.

It is because of these combined factors that the IRGC, today, is considered as one of the most important groups in Iran.

With inputs from agencies