What Is the IRGC? Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Explained

IRGC stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Persian Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Eslami, usually shortened to Sepah. Iran keeps two militaries side by side: the regular army, the Artesh, which defends the country’s territory, and the Guards, which defend the revolution itself.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the Guards formed on May 5, 1979, three months after the Shah fell, because he did not trust an officer corps trained under the monarchy. The constitution makes the split permanent. Article 150 gives the IRGC the task of guarding the revolution and its achievements, and Article 110 lets the Supreme Leader appoint and dismiss its commander. The Guards report to him, not to the elected president.

The two forces mirror each other. Each has a ground force, a navy and an air arm, and both sit under the General Staff of the Armed Forces, now led by Major General Ali Abdollahi, himself a senior IRGC officer. In practice the Guards hold the weapons that matter most: the ballistic missiles, the drones and the fast boats in Hormuz.

Major General Ahmad Vahidi has commanded the IRGC since March 2026, first as acting commander. His predecessor, Major General Mohammad Pakpour, was killed in the opening U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, the day the war began. Pakpour had taken over in June 2025, after Israel killed Hossein Salami.

Mojtaba Khamenei confirmed him in the post and promoted him to major general in a set of six appointments announced on August 10, 2026. The same decrees named Mostafa Izadi as his deputy, Rear Admiral Ali Ozmaei as head of the IRGC Navy and Hossein Taeb, a former chief of the Guards’ intelligence organization, as commander of the Basij. Vahidi is a veteran of the Guards’ foreign operations who later served as Iran’s defense minister and interior minister. Argentina has sought him through an Interpol red notice since 2007 over the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

The appointments favored long-serving insiders. On November 13 Izadi said Iran’s strikes in any renewed war would not stay confined to Israel and the Middle East.

The IRGC has five main parts: the Ground Force, the Aerospace Force, the Navy, the Quds Force and the Basij militia.

The Ground Force is the largest, built for border defense and internal security. The Aerospace Force runs Iran’s ballistic and cruise missiles and its long-range drones; its commander, Brigadier General Majid Mousavi, showed off a new underground missile city on November 10, 2026, and the Guards claim missile production has moved below ground. The Navy operates the fast attack craft, missile boats, mines and coastal missiles in the Gulf.

The Quds Force handles operations abroad: arming, training and paying allied groups from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Iraqi militias such as Kataib Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. Brigadier General Esmail Qaani has led it since January 2020, when a U.S. drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. The Basij is a volunteer paramilitary force used to police streets and protests and to mobilize reserves in wartime.

The Guards also run their own intelligence organization and a cyber arm, the Electronic and Cyber Center. France said on November 9, 2026, that one of its units, Shahid Kaveh, sabotaged refrigeration at about 700 French food sites in October.

The IRGC Navy is the force Iran uses to control traffic through Hormuz, and it says no ship may pass without Iranian permission. Its commander, Rear Admiral Ali Ozmaei, says the Guards’ navy holds the strait and the Persian Gulf while the regular navy covers the Gulf of Oman.

Ozmaei took over after Israel killed his predecessor, Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, in an air strike on Bandar Abbas in March 2026, a death Iran confirmed days later. He had been Tangsiri’s deputy and had commanded the Guards’ Fifth Naval District since it was created in 2012. On November 11 he accused the U.S. military of luring tankers into danger by saying the strait is open.

U.S. Central Command rejects the Guards’ account. Its commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, said on October 25 that the main transit routes were free of Iranian mines, and the command says the United States and its partners control the strait. Our Hormuz status tracker follows transits and incidents day by day, and our explainer on why Iran closed the strait sets out Tehran’s stated conditions.

No official figure exists, but most estimates put the IRGC at about 150,000 to 190,000 active personnel, beside a regular army of roughly 350,000.

The figure of about 190,000 is the one most 2026 assessments use; older estimates ran from 125,000 to 150,000. The Basij is far harder to count. Estimates of its active members start near 90,000, one U.S. research estimate puts its total strength at about 450,000 including staff in communications and cultural work, and Iranian officials claim it can mobilize several hundred thousand volunteers more. None of these figures accounts for losses since February 28, 2026, which Iran does not publish.

Yes, in the law of the United States, Canada, Australia, the European Union and, under a separate state-threats power, the United Kingdom. Iran rejects every one of these listings.

The United States designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization with effect from April 15, 2019, the first time it had applied the label to part of another country’s government. Canada listed the whole IRGC as a terrorist entity on June 19, 2024; it had listed the Quds Force alone since 2012. Australia listed it as a state sponsor of terrorism on November 27, 2025, under a law passed after Iranian-directed attacks on Jewish sites, making support for the Guards punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

European Union foreign ministers agreed to list the IRGC on January 29, 2026, and the Council formally added it to the EU terrorist list on February 19, 2026, freezing its assets in member states. Britain took a different route. It designated the IRGC on July 17, 2026, under the new National Security (State Threats) Act 2026 rather than the Terrorism Act, after Parliament approved the order. Supporting or assisting the Guards in the UK now carries up to 14 years in prison.

Not all of it, but the Guards are among Iran’s biggest economic players. Their engineering arm, the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, grew out of wartime engineering work in the 1980-88 war with Iraq and now takes state contracts in oil and gas, roads, dams, ports and pipelines.

Companies tied to the Guards also work in mining, transport and telecommunications, a network Iranian officials present as a resistance economy built to survive sanctions. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Khatam al-Anbiya on October 25, 2007. That business reach gives the Guards a direct stake in the blockade and in any deal.