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Iran's battered IRGC faces moment of truth amid protests
Story by Tom O'Connor • 22h • (13 January 2026)
10 min read
Human rights groups say dozens of protesters have been killed,
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Newsweek
What’s Driving Iran’s Biggest Unrest In Years
As Iran‘s government moves to quell some of the largest protests the nation has faced in years without triggering U.S. intervention, the spotlight is on the elite and influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Having established since the Islamic Revolution as both a powerful war-fighting force as well as a tool of suppressing internal dissent, particularly through its Basij paramilitary arm, the IRGC has traditionally been deployed as one of the most potent forces in both restoring order and combating foreign infiltration.
But the IRGC finds itself still reeling from major blows suffered during a 12-day war with Israel in June, when scores of key commanders and personnel were killed. A number of other members and leading allies were slain in other theaters of the broader conflict surrounding the war in Gaza, particularly in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, leaving the Axis of Resistance coalition built by the IRGC over the course of decades now in a moment of crisis.
Even with these setbacks, however, the IRGC’s deeply entrenched role positions it as a key player in any outcome of the unrest that has shaken the foundations of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei‘s rule.
“With an estimated force of around 180,000 personnel, the IRGC retains substantial institutional depth,” Saeid Golkar, associate professor at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga who has written extensively on the inner workings of the IRGC, particularly the Basij, said. “Losses at the senior level did not disrupt command continuity or operational capacity, and Khamenei was able to replace the deceased commanders with relative ease.”
“The Basij, as a mass organization embedded in society, also remained intact, since its effectiveness depends on local networks and coordination rather than a narrow leadership elite,” Golkar told Newsweek. “Overall, the war imposed symbolic and strategic costs on the IRGC but did not meaningfully weaken its ability to suppress domestic dissent.”
A motorist drives past billboards bearing the portraits of slain IRGC generals, left to right, Hossein Salami, Mohammad Bagheri and Gholamreza Mehrabi, who were killed by Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, on July 9, 2025.
The Ayatollah’s Top Men
The IRGC’s organization underwent a substantial forced restructuring as a result of Israeli strikes last year. Among the top figures killed included IRGC commander-in-chief Major General Hossein Salami; Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammed Bagheri; IRGC Aerospace Forces commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh; Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters commander Major General Gholam Ali Rashid; and IRGC Intelligence Organization chief Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi.
Golkar noted that most of the losses were “oriented toward external deterrence rather than domestic security,” while “the forces central to suppressing dissent, including the IRGC Ground Forces, security units, intelligence organs, and the Basij, were largely unaffected.”
For example, Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani remains at the helm of the Basij, while Brigadier General Mohammad Hossein Nejat “retains significant influence” within the Tharallah Headquarters, the IRGC command responsible for security in Tehran, Golkar said. Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri also evaded targeting during the 12-day war to maintain his charge of the IRGC Navy.
As for the current most important individuals having been promoted as a result of the death of their seniors, Golkar identified the new top IRGC commanders as Major General Mohammad Pakpour in place of Salami as commander-in-chief, with Brigadier General Mohammad Karami assuming Pakpour’s former role as head of the IRGC Ground Force, as well as Brigadier General Majid Mousavi in place of Hajizadeh in the Aerospace Force and Brigadier General Majid Khademi in place of Kazemi in the Intelligence Organization.
Notably, Bagheri’s position as head of the Iranian Armed Forces was filled by a member of Iran’s conventional military, the Artesh, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi. Two other key appointments made over the past six months include Brigadier General Hojatollah Ghoreishi being named IRGC coordinating deputy in October and Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi being appointed as deputy commander of the IRGC last month.
Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who specializes in tracking the structure and trends within the IRGC, identified Vahidi—a former head of the IRGC’s expeditionary Quds Force and minister of defense who also most recently served as interior minister to late President Ebrahim Raisi—as “the most influential figure within the IRGC.” His portfolio “includes internal security, and he is deeply familiar with the inner workings of Iran’s state bureaucracy,” Alfoneh told Newsweek.
Next in terms of clout, he argued, is Aerospace Force chief Majid Mousavi, “who is responsible for rebuilding Iran’s missile arsenal in anticipation of a future confrontation with Israel.”
This hierarchy signals a potential shift in priorities for the IRGC, as he said that the current head of the Quds Force, Major General Esmail Qaani, who took charge after the U.S. killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, “is no longer a central figure, reflecting the broader decline of the IRGC’s regional proxy network.”
Alfoneh also saw the overall state of the IRGC as having suffered since the intervention of the Axis of Resistance into the war in Gaza, sparked in October 2023 by a surprise attack from the Palestinian Hamas movement against Israel.
“The weakening of the IRGC began with the near-destruction of Lebanese Hezbollah in September 2024, continued with its hasty withdrawal from Syria amid the collapse of the Assad regime, and culminated in the 12-day war, during which Israel effectively decapitated the organization’s senior leadership,” Alfoneh said.
“Despite these blows, the IRGC’s decentralized structure allowed it to continue launching missiles at Israel,” he added. “Even so, today’s IRGC is a shadow of its former self.”
Footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown, in Tehran, Iran, on January 9.
Footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown, in Tehran, Iran, on January 9.
The Deal Debate
The IRGC is traditionally viewed as one of the most loyal institutions to the supreme leader and the Twelver Shiite Islam Velayat-e Faqih, or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurisprudence, system over which he presides. Established amid the 1979 revolution led by Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that established the Islamic Republic, the IRGC consolidated a number of paramilitary groups and soon went on to play a front-line role in the eight-year war with Iraq that erupted just a year later.
In addition to building the sprawling Axis of Resistance network abroad, the IRGC has also in the decades since expanded its stakes within Iran’s political and economic sectors. And with questions already surrounding who may succeed 86-year-old Khamenei, the IRGC’s potential to adopt an even greater role, perhaps even leadership, has been a major source of speculation.
Should the situation in Iran escalate further, Alfoneh argued, the IRGC would be well-positioned to step up and potentially cut a deal to avoid the kind of U.S. intervention that struck three Iranian military sites amid the 12-day war with Israel in June, perhaps looking to instead replicate the kind of arrangement established in Venezuela following the U.S. Delta Force operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife out of their home in Caracas earlier this month.
“As for a potential break with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the IRGC—as an institution with vast economic interests and an entrenched business empire—prioritizes survival above ideological loyalty,” Alfoneh said. “If necessary, this could include complicity in the leadership council’s potential sidelining of Khamenei and reaching a Venezuela-style accommodation with President Donald J. Trump, or even endorsing Reza Pahlavi, provided the organization’s core interests and privileges are preserved.”
Pahlavi, the U.S.-based son of Iran’s last shah, whose monarchy was deposed by the 1979 revolution, has sought to position himself as a potential substitute for the Islamic Republic. Some footage surfacing from within Iran’s demonstrations appear to show a number of protesters holding his image and chanting his name, though the extent to which he may be capable of mounting a successful power play remains uncertain, even in the event of a government collapse.
“In the past, Iranians appealed for support and were met with hesitation or silence,” Pahlavi recently told Newsweek. “Today, there is growing recognition that this regime is irredeemable and has reached the end of the road.”
Referring to Trump’s vow of intervention in the event of the mass killing of protesters at the hands of security forces, Pahlavi hailed the U.S. leader’s “clear warnings to the criminal leaders of the Islamic Republic,” which have likely “made a difference in how the regime has acted.”
Meanwhile, in a letter sent to United Nations leadership and obtained by Newsweek on Friday, Iranian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Amir Saeid Iravani accused the U.S., along with Israel, of having “encouraged violence, supported terrorist groups, incited societal destabilization, and sought to transform peaceful protests into violent disorder under the guise of ‘support,’ ‘rescue,’ or the ‘protection of the Iranian people.'”
Afshon Ostovar, associate professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a leading expert on the IRGC, argued that the IRGC at this stage retained a significant capacity to handle internal security challenges. At the same time, he saw the potential for dissent among the organization’s ranks, a phenomenon that has yet to manifest but could prove deeply consequential to the fate of the Islamic Republic.
“The 12-Day war left the IRGC battered, and much weaker as an external actor. But the IRGC remains a potent force domestically,” Ostovar told Newsweek. “It retains the arms, personnel, and command and control to kill Iranian civilians on the streets. Military defections are always a possibility.”
“The more stress and pressure on the regime, but from within and from the outside, the more likely defections may start to happen,” Ostovar said. “Without defections, the regime is unlikely to lose control of the country.”
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Iran protest activity 1/11/2026
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Holding the Line
Publicly, IRGC leadership has rallied behind Khamenei and the Islamic Republic’s governing system, reiterating their loyalty to the Velayat-e Faqih system and vowing to restore order and fend off any foreign interference.
“The sovereignty of the nation, the strength of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic and the high position of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudence, which is the achievement of the pure blood shed on the earth by hundreds of thousands of martyrs, are the red line of the Iranians and they will defend it resolutely and courageously with all their being,” the IRGC said in a statement issued Sunday, calling for a nationwide mobilization for pro-government counter-rallies on Monday.
The demonstrations, which were widely broadcast on official and semi-official media outlets despite ongoing internet blackouts, marked the largest showing of support of the Islamic Republic since the beginning of the anti-government demonstrations, which began on December 28 among shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar expressing frustration over the country’s ailing economic outlook before expanding into a national movement.
Golkar, for his part, felt it “unlikely that senior IRGC commanders would break with Ali Khamenei, even if protests intensify or external threats from the United States or Israel increase.”
“IRGC loyalty is institutional and rooted in shared survival, material interests, and legal protection,” Golkar said. “Defection would carry exceptionally high personal and organizational costs. Sustained demonstrations are more likely to reinforce cohesion than produce fractures, as the IRGC interprets unrest through a security lens rather than a political one.”
“From a structural perspective, only the removal of a narrow group of top decision-makers could meaningfully alter elite calculations,” he added. “Broader pressure alone is unlikely to weaken the IRGC in ways that would benefit Iranian society or shift the internal balance of power.”
While Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected last summer on a reformist platform following principlist Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash, initially called for a pragmatic approach to the unrest, acknowledging protesters’ grievances and calling on security forces to show restraint, reports indicate a rising death toll.
Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based nongovernmental organization that reports on alleged human rights abuses within Iran, has placed the death toll at around 650 people, noting unverified accounts of potentially thousands more killed. Iranian state media has reported on the deaths of more than 120 members of the security forces and military, including members of the Basij and other IRGC institutions.
Some armed dissident groups within Iran, including the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), have also claimed attacks on IRGC positions in recent days.
Yet Iranian officials have also begun to portray the demonstrations as fading in strength and order gradually being restored.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, former head of the IRGC Aerospace Force who also ran for the presidency last year, declared during a pro-government rally in Tehran on Monday that “our Basiji, police and Revolutionary Guard stood as the defenders of Iran and, with their power and blood and with the help of the people, defended and established the security of the country.”
“Thanks to God’s grace and the vigilance of the dear nation, the sacrifices of the police, the heroic Basij, and the brave Revolutionary Guard in the past two or three days, and the presence of the people in the square today,” Qalibaf said, “the situation has been brought under control by the security forces.”
A crowd gathers during a pro-government rally on January 12 in Tehran, Iran.
Doubling Down
Sina Toosi, senior fellow and Iran specialist at the Center for International Policy, saw evidence that, far from moving to appease the protesters, the IRGC was moving to adopt an even tougher stance with the aim of safeguarding the ruling system and enhancing their grip on power.
“Thus far, the IRGC has remained cohesive and loyal in its central mission of protecting the system,” Toosi told Newsweek. Recent leadership changes point not toward moderation or fragmentation, but toward consolidation along harder lines.”
“The elevation of figures such as Ahmad Vahidi to deputy IRGC commander, following his tenure as Raisi’s interior minister, reflects a turn toward more rigid security thinking rather than a more conciliatory posture,” he added. “This group of leadership is shaped by internal control, crisis management, and confrontation with the U.S.”
At the same time, he pointed out that “it would be a mistake to view the IRGC as monolithic,” with the organization at the moment contending with a number of pressure points.
“Beneath senior leadership, the rank and file are embedded in the same society experiencing deep economic strain, social polarization, and heightened anxiety over the risk of war,” Toosi said. “Those pressures are real and cumulative, and over time they can shape cohesion, even within highly institutionalized security organizations.”
As for now, however, he argued that “the Islamic Republic’s core base appears to have rallied, senior commanders remain aligned, and there are no clear signs of defections or meaningful fractures within the Guard.”
“Whether this cohesion can be sustained indefinitely under worsening economic and political conditions is a different question,” Toosi said, “but at this stage, the trajectory points toward hardening rather than unraveling.”
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