Event · Twenty-first century · Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

1979–

Parallel military and security force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, founded 1979 to protect the revolution. Controls large economic and external operations alongside the regular army.

Facts

Founded: 1979, after the Islamic Revolution.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Role: Internal security, expeditionary and proxy operations, and extensive economic holdings; distinct from the regular Artesh.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

The record

The IRGC was built so the new regime would not depend only on the inherited army. It answers to the Supreme Leader's revolutionary mandate. External arms and domestic economic reach are part of the same filing.

This page is a container for the desk article; it is not a full order-of-battle.

Images

Desert fortification wall and empty watch road at blue hour — security architecture, no martyr mural.

Connected

Links in both directions: what this page points to, and what points here.

CountryIran

Articles

Desk pieces that belong with this record.

2026-10-06The IRGCA modernizing monarchy fell, and a theocracy rose in its place. To understand the trajectory of modern Iran, one must avoid conflating the Iranian population, the governance of the Islamic Republic, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—three distinct political and social entities…Read

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