The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is the primary department of the Iranian Armed Forces.
The facility was established shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In this revolution, a motion led by Muslim college students led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty with US help.
The IRGC was launched to offer extra safety to the brand new regime and function a counterweight to the common military.
It is a response to Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Khamenei.
The IRGC has an estimated 125,000 troops within the military, navy, and air forces, though some analysts consider this quantity is way larger.
It additionally instructions the Basij Religious Militia, a volunteer militia loyal to the regime and sometimes used to suppress anti-government protests.
Analysts say the variety of Basij volunteers might quantity within the thousands and thousands.
The Quds Force is the overseas espionage and paramilitary arm of the Revolutionary Guards and has vital affect over allied militias all through the Middle East.
Its high commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in 2020.
The Revolutionary Guards, categorised as a terrorist group by the United States, needs to form the Middle East state of affairs in Iran’s favor.
In 1982, he based Lebanese Hezbollah to export Iran’s Islamic revolution and combat in opposition to the Israeli military that invaded Lebanon that very same yr.
What are the navy capabilities of the Revolutionary Guards?
The Revolutionary Guards have land, air and naval capabilities and oversee Iran’s ballistic missile program, thought-about by specialists to be the biggest within the Middle East.
The missiles had been used to assault insurgents in Syria and northern Iraq.
The United States, European nations and Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for a 2019 missile and drone assault that crippled the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia.
Iran denied involvement within the assault.
The IRGC has its personal intelligence division and a variety of standard fight tools, which it has demonstrated in its involvement within the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
Experts consider that its cruise and ballistic missile fleet has the potential and vary to strike any goal within the area.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Iran has the biggest variety of ballistic missiles within the area.