Name: A make-or-break moment for Iran's Revolutionary Guard | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T16:53:01.000Z
Duration: 18 min 51 s
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US President Donald Trump has warned Iran that the US Will take very strong action if the regime executes protesters.

Rights groups say thousands of people have been arrested since mass protests erupted some three weeks ago.

Basic passive voice

One demonstrator reported to be in government custody is 26 year old Efran Sultani, who was detained just last week.

His family says he may be executed today.

Rights groups say more than 2,500 people have been killed in the protests.

And Iran has threatened to strike American military bases in the Middle east if Washington intervenes on behalf of the demonstrators.

A likely target for the US would be the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's elite military force.

As protests rage across Iran, a Kurdish activist tells DW exclusively that the elite Revolutionary Guard has fanned out throughout the country, stopping vehicles, searching mobile phones, stoking more resentment against the regime and its security forces.

The Guards are estimated to number between 150,000 and 200,000 active personnel.

They have their own army, navy and air force.

A parallel military whose official role is to protect the legacy of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

They're led by Mohammad Pakpour, who reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Bypassing the government and president, the Guards are largely insulated from the economic pressures felt by Iranians due to their control over defense, oil and gas, construction and telecommunications concerns worth billions of dollars.

While ordinary Iranians suffer under sanctions, fueling more resentment against the Guards and the theocratic regime, the Guards have also dealt with Iran's proxy forces in the Middle east, the so called axis of resistance, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Multiple countries have labeled the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

This has made them a prime target in recent years.

In 2020, a US airstrike took out the head of the Al Quds Force, an elite unit within the Guards.

And last summer, Israeli airstrikes killed much of the Guards senior leadership.

Despite those losses and and significant damage done to its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Guards have maintained their position.

Their closeness to the supreme leader makes them indispensable to the regime and makes them a priority target for any international intervention.

He's an Iranian American political scientist who teaches at the University of Tennessee in chattanooga in the U.S.

Saeed, tell us more about the Revolutionary Guard and what's at stake for them in this upris.

Revolutionary guard, created in 1979 as a small militia, gradually expanded to the huge military and you know, later on to the state in a state revolutionary regard, as the videos out has, you know, economic branches, cultural branches, media, tv, security, intelligence, they are state in a state.

And that's why, you know, the falling of the Islamic Republic is a falling of the IRGCs.

They are the clergy and IRGC are the two sides of the one coin.

And that's why they believe that the dismantling of the Islamic Republic is the end of the irgc.

If the theocratic regime in Iran were to fall, could members of the Revolutionary Guard, given how powerful you just described them as being, could they end up filling the power vacuum?

If the Islamic Republic, if the Ayatollah Khamenei have been killed or taken out, and

there is no translation, the IRGC are powerful to, you know, to take the position.

But if the attack with the Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC high rank commander continue, then we will have a transition.

You have to remember when we Talk about the IRGC, IRGC has about 180,000 personnel from the rank to file.

For us, this council of commandership of the IRGC is important.

About 1,000 of the high rank commander that we have to think and we have to take care of.

Other than that, most of these people are the Iranian from different social classes, belong to different ethnicities and that they can actually incorporate it with the Iran army later on.

So just to clarify for our viewers, the IGRC being the Iranian Revolutionary irgc, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

So to clarify, it actually is Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

There is no name of Iran in their mandate or even in the charter.

So now this started, this protest movement started over the collapsing economy.

But the protests seem to be morphing into something larger in Iran.

What do you see as the main source of anger and discontent driving these protests?

We have to remember this protest is not an isolated phenomenon.

You know, from 1979, as the Islamic Republic took the power, there have been several wave of the protest.

Before that was Mahsa Amini protests from 2020.

November protest at the Islamic Republic killed 1,500 people in two days and so on and so forth.

So there are a lot of waves of the protests for different reasons.

Islamic Republic is a total security regime to cratic security regime.

Very politically repressive, culturally and socially stagnated economically.

People have the Complaint about water scarcity, electricity, air pollution, very bad economic situation.

But all of these structural costs accumulated for the last five decades has led to the Iranian from different social classes, different group come to the street and protest Islamic Republic.

They don't want any more to reform the system unlike two decades before.

They just want to change the system because they realize this system is not able to provide even the basic need for the Iranians.

So the people are really unhappy that they're not having basic services provided.

The regime though claims it has a handle on the uprising.

Briefly, if you can very clearly, when you shut down the Internet, one of the reason that you are doing it is trying to hide the atrocity and crime against humanity by killing at least 12,000 people.

But at the same time it shows that you are very insecure.

You don't want people to understand what is happening in Iran.

Islamic Republic is in the weakest moment of history.

You know, at the beginning there was a news that Iran formed the United States.

But you have to remember when the United States took up Qasem Soleimani, the second man in Iran, Iran did not nothing.

When the United States bombarded Iran and destroyed Iran nuclear facilities six months ago, Iran did nothing.

And you just can imagine six months later when they are very weak, this is just barking on the tree without any action.

Saeed, thank you very much for speaking with us today.

Iranian American political scientist Saeed Golkar.

And Farzan Sabed is an Iran expert at the Global Governance center in Geneva, joins me now.

How big a role does Iran's Revolutionary Guard play in clamping down on this protest?

They're the leading security institution in Iran, possessing not only military elements but also security elements throughout all of Iran's provinces as well as bigger security regions.

The Revolutionary Guards have headquarters which are used as centers to coordinate their response for the crackdown on protesters, including both intelligence as well as suppression on the ground.

And in terms of who's doing a lot of the actual killing.

I believe your report mentioned the 2000 dead figure.

We have some estimates that are much higher, potentially as high as 12,000, although that that remains unconfirmed.

Many of the individuals and security forces that will be committing those massacres and those killings will be the forces of the Revolutionary Guard, including full personnel of the Guards themselves, as well as components of the besieged paramilitary elements.

We have footage of from the protesters are on the ground doing a lot of the killing.

Anger is clearly boiling over in Iran among the Iranian population.

Tell us a little bit more about this background on this anger toward both the regime and the Revolutionary Guard, because on the face of it, this uprising has been about economic inequality and years of stagnation.

One thing I assume, which I think is a bit of a misnomer for the media, is that these are presented as economic protests.

But going back to December 2017, which was the first of four of these major anti regime protests, what we see is that there will be a trigger.

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A make-or-break moment for Iran's Revolutionary Guard | DW News

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