The US-Israeli military campaign has destroyed Iran's civilian government in its opening strikes - but the true governing force in the country, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has survived largely intact, George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures, has argued. Two and a half weeks into the war, the IRGC has proven far more resilient than Washington anticipated, maintaining the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and launch retaliatory attacks across the region.
Friedman laid out his assessment in a podcast for Geopolitical Futures, as reported by "Hvylya". The core miscalculation, he argued, was treating the civilian administration as the seat of Iranian power. "By destroying what they saw was the regime, the civilian administrators, they did not destroy the governing force inside of Iran. That was the IRGC," Friedman said.
The IRGC operates what Friedman described as a "mosaic force" - a decentralized structure in which regional commanders can act independently of central command. This makes the organization extremely difficult to neutralize through airstrikes alone. "The official part that meets in the United Nations and so on was gone, but the true power in Iran was the IRGC and the IRGC remained very much in place," he noted.
Beyond its military role, the IRGC holds enormous economic and internal security power across Iran. Friedman characterized it as "a government in itself" - one that the US failed to account for when planning the campaign. The destruction of Iran's formal leadership, including the prime minister and senior aides, did not trigger the popular uprising Washington had expected. Instead, the IRGC filled the vacuum immediately.
The administration had bet on the assumption that months of anti-government street protests signaled a population ready to overthrow the regime once its leaders were removed. "The president called for an uprising," Friedman said. "In fact, Iran turned out to be far more resilient than was expected, and we are now in the United States facing how to continue this war based on the realities we now encounter."
Also read: Trump's Regime Change Bet in Iran Backfires: What the Streets of Tehran Revealed.