The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps started as a brotherhood in arms with no ranks. It ended up as a business conglomerate sitting atop hundreds of billions in misappropriated state assets. Ali M. Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, traced this transformation in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
"Hvylya" reports, referencing the WSJ's weekend interview, that the IRGC "became a business conglomerate and a political force gradually" - and then suddenly. The decisive period came under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13), when auditing bodies were dismantled and many state assets transferred to the IRGC. By one assessment, $800 billion in revenue went missing.
"A lot of them in the IRGC made a lot of money," Ansari said, "and they don't want to lose it all." This financial stake has become a stronger motivation to fight than old revolutionary fervor. The IRGC's resistance to change is no longer about ideology - it is about protecting wealth.
When media speculation turns to Iran potentially devolving into a security state run by the IRGC, Ansari's response is sharp: "It already is!" The transformation from revolutionary guard to ruling oligarchy happened in stages, but the result is a regime where the line between political power and financial extraction has been erased.
The supreme leader's role mirrors this decay. Instead of anchoring a modern republic in Iran's Shiite tradition as the 1979 revolutionaries had promised, "the supreme leader became a sort of religious monarch," Ansari said. Parliament was rendered "an empty shell." Iran's political system has devolved into a kleptocratic security state wrapped in religious legitimacy - and the men running it have both the means and the motive to cling to power at any cost.
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