How a split in the IRGC could break up Iran

How sick is Iran’s supreme leader?

That has been the question on the tongues of many a foreign policy analyst as protests rage from Tehran to Baluchistan.

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 83, had surgery some weeks ago for bowel obstruction after suffering extreme stomach pains and high fever, reported the New York Times in September.

“His doctors remain concerned that he is too weak to even sit up in bed,” they reported

A former president of Iran and protégé of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, Khamenei assumed the position of the country’s top religious, political and military authority in 1989. But what happens when Khamenei dies? And who will succeed him?

The Assembly of Experts for the Leadership is an 88-member body of Islamic jurists, elected by direct popular vote every eight years. According to the Iranian Constitution, the Assembly’s mandate is to appoint, monitor, and even dismiss the supreme leader.

In practice, the Assembly acts as a rubber-stamping committee, and has never really questioned the supreme leader.

Half of the council’s twelve members are theologians appointed by the supreme leader; the other half are legal scholars selected by the Iranian Parliament.

The Guardian Council also weeds out candidates for office. In the 2017 and 2021 presidential elections, it disqualified Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand ex-president who had, while in office, clashed with Khamenei.

The Guardian Council also determines whether laws passed by the parliament are permissible under the constitution and Islamic precepts.

Another body, the Expediency Council, established in the 1988 revision of the constitution, mediates between the parliament and Guardian Council.

Because the appointment to the Guardian Council is split between the Supreme Leader and the Parliament, a compromise is often reached.

As a result, reformist candidates such as former President Hassan Rouhani, along with other more moderate politicians, have been qualified to run in the elections for the Council of Experts — a subtle challenge to Khamenei’s reign.

“The conservative camp has divided, with some of the traditional conservatives moving away from hard-liners and closer to the centrists on key issues,” the Washington Post reported.

The Successor

The Assembly is composed of a leadership council and six committees, which meet twice a year. Although it doesn’t provide much of a check on the current leader, it can influence his successors.

It selected Hussein-Ali Montazeri as deputy supreme leader in 1985 but removed him from this position when he came to blows with the Grand Ayatollah over the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988.

Montazeri, a high-ranking Shi’a cleric, did not accept Khamenei’s ascension.

The conflict came because Ali Khamenei was not a Grand Ayatollah when he ascended to the role of Marja e Taqlid (Source of Emulation); the religious, spiritual, and political leader of Iranians.

The title of Grand Ayatollah, a more formal accolade, is given to scholars who distinguish themselves, usually requiring a lifetime of study and dedication, the publication of new interpretations of Islamic texts, as well as a dedicated following among young Islamic scholars.

Of those few, the most holy is selected to become the Guardian Jurist, the Infallible Imam, who chose to rule Iran and guard the Islamic world until judgement day.

The Assembly of Experts, as directed by Ruhollah Khomeini, changed the constitution to allow Khamenei to become the successor, something which raised the hackles of many a grand scholar who see the role of the Supreme Leader as a holy one beyond all.

In December 1989, on the eve of Khomeini’s ascension, Montazeri's supporters in Qom distributed ‘night letters’ questioning Khamenei's qualifications to be the Marja e Taqlid.

In October 1997, after openly criticising the authority of Khamenei, Montazeri was placed under house arrest under the pretext of protecting him from hardliners.

He was freed in 2003 after more than 100 Iranian legislators called on President Khatami to release him, with the government allegedly worrying over a popular backlash if he died while in custody.

Because the question of Khamenei’s leadership is more-or-less settled, challengers are biding their time. But should the Supreme Leader suddenly need replacing, it is unlikely they will remain silent.

Unlike his predecessor, Khamenei has not definitively chosen a successor. The current president, Ebrahim Raisi, is seen as a protégé of the supreme leader — mostly due to his standing among other Shia clerics.

He oversaw the 1988 massacres of political prisoners, nicknamed the ‘hangman’ for his role in targeting dissidents, even going so far as to have members of his own family tried and executed.

But as protests mount and Iran’s political stability spirals further and further out of control, reformists are feeling bolder, and the hardline camp is being increasingly challenged.

The Second Son

The Supreme leader’s son, Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, also has ambitions to replace his father.

Mojtaba, according to The Guardian and French newspaper Libération, among other sources, is widely believed to control huge financial assets.

The second son is considered to be a potential successor to his father, though Iranian clerics dispute this. He does, however, have the backing of prominent scholars and influential reformists within the parliament.

Mojtaba is a supporter of Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been ‘distancing himself from President Ebrahim Raisi’s policies as his economic failures become obvious and ‘dangerous’, according to the Iran Times.

He is credited as one of the key players who allowed Ahmadinejad to take power in 2009 when a disputed election brought the Green Movement protest to Iran.

Ahmadinejad rebelled against the Supreme Leader during his time as president. He was sidelined, but still holds supporters within the regime. He has also been critical of Raisi’s tenure in the months leading up to the protests, taking verbal shots at his economic policies.

The two represent the difference between the elected and appointed branches of the Islamic Republic. Raisi, a cleric, is seen as a model of obedience to the Supreme Leader and the velayat-e faqih (Guardian Jurist). Ahmadinejad is well-known to have clashed with the Ayatollah in the past, but as the economic and political situation in Iran becomes worse, his tenure appears to be more appealing.

Mojtaba may emerge as a compromise candidate in the eyes of moderates, but Raisi and his hardline supporters do not share a reputation for compromise.

Siding himself with the reformists in 2009, Mojtaba reportedly took control of the Basij militia during the protests over the election. Now, the Basij represent the majority of the forces fighting against the protesters.

They were absorbed into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force as the Green Movement saw the worst protests the regime has faced since the 80s, but they make up a significant amount of troops within the Iranian paramilitary group.

With President Raisi on one side and second son Mojtaba on the other, a succession crisis triggered by the death of the supreme leader could result in a split and civil war within the IRGC

The Iran-Iraq War

The rivalry between the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards began during the Iran-Iraq War, according to the memoirs of then-parliamentary speaker Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The Artesh, the conventional army of Iran, were ground to a nub during the brutal war triggered when Saddam Hussein invaded the neighbouring country following the 1979 Revolution.

In the years after the revolution, the army was decimated by purges, carried out by Iran’s clerks afraid of another coup.

Troops deserted as the war turned and the purges became more commonplace, with the regime relying increasingly more on the Guards — created with loyalty to the Supreme Leader in mind.

The Guards, experienced in urban warfare, fought house-to-house after the Iraqi troops invaded, organising the defence of towns where the conventional army had little experience fighting, according to Iran's Revolutionary Guard: The Threat that Grows While America Sleeps by Steven K. O'Hern.

A young force of initially around 30,000 ethnic Persians, the Guards refused to accept any former soldiers who had fought in the Shah’s army, emphasising the religious nature of the unit.

Once the head of an Iranian clan joined the Guards, the entire extended family would also join and serve as a unit. After the war, they would return to their province and enforce the security of their own neighbourhood.

By contrast, the Basij was a voluntary militia, whose members tended to be from rural and uneducated areas. Its members would fight during the winter, as they returned during the summer months to complete the seasonal harvest.

Boys as young as 12 and old men would go through weeks of indoctrination and little training before being sent as cannon fodder to fortified Iraqi positions, often being sent ahead of the IRGC through mined areas before the larger force followed.

A plastic key hung from the neck of each Basij soldier — they were told it would open the gate to heaven when they died on the battlefield.

Fights often broke out between the two forces as the war intensified.

They came under the formal authority of the IRGC commander in 2007 and were incorporated into IRGC ground forces in 2008. But over the years, the Basij managed to carve out some independence within the IRGC.

The IRGC are loyal to the president, and ultimately the Supreme Leader. Many of the Basij, however, see Mojtaba as their leader.

Should both candidates declare themselves the new leader, it remains an open question whether the Basij would split from the wider IRGC over such a dispute.

Official estimates put the Basij police force as high as 23.8 million, whereas the IRGC claims to have around 210,000 active personal.

But a 2005 study of the Basij by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, put the number of full-time, uniformed and active members at 90,000, with another 300,000 reservists and some 1 million that could be mobilised when necessary.

By contrast, the Guards forces now number up to 150,000 men divided into land, sea and air forces. The IRGC land forces are estimated to number between 100,000 and 125,000. The IRGC’s navy may total as many as 20,000, though some estimates are significantly lower. Another 20,000 are in the IRGC naval forces. And the Qods Force totals around 5,000

The Iran Primer says that ‘the Revolutionary Guards and the regular military are effectively rivals for resources, equipment and power’ but added that, for the time being, ‘the IRGC [also] seems to have succeeded in suppressing the independent aspirations of the Basij.’

That was before the pandemic and the recent protests, however, with the influence of the IRGC continuing to wane with each passing day.

In December 2015, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said a committee in the Assembly of Experts ‘is examining potential candidates to be the next Supreme Leader.’

He also said the Assembly would be open to choosing ‘a council of leaders if needed’ instead of a single leader, suggesting they were considering abolishing the role of Supreme Leader altogether.

But splitting the title is likely only to further embed divisions. One of the reasons the council has not declared new candidates is the knowledge that such a statement would likely cleave the regime in two at a time when it needs to stand against popular dissent.

Iran’s Islamic Republic has never seen a leader share his power. Upon the death of Khamenei, it is unlikely a successor will rise unchallenged.

And if a strong central figurehead holding the Ayatollahs together is toppled, the regime may topple with it.

After Iran

But what replaces the IRGC? And what could its collapse look like?

The ongoing protests have surpassed those seen under the Green Movement, comparable in scale only with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the event which spawned the current regime.

Yet the Supreme Leader is not the Shah. Under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, protests continued for over a year before the western-backed government was overthrown.

Pahlavi was diagnosed with cancer leading up to the protests. He was often docile, slow to respond, and questioned his own rule. The same cannot be said about the IRGC.

In The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (2013), David Crist documents the CIA’s involvement in the conflict. Never has the agency been credited for so much while doing so little, one agent wrote to another, despairing at the agency’s lack of preparation leading up to the revolution.

The intelligence agencies are not resting on their laurels this time, though. The agency has recruited multiple agents within the country, some reportedly within the regime itself — but it so far seems to have had little success in converting such infiltrations into regime rebellion.

The Shah’s government also made many mistakes. The Shah’s troops would ignore protests, only to turn around and crack down on dissent too harshly, turning more and more citizens against them until the point of no return had been reached.

Are we nearing that point of no return for the IRGC? For many of the protestors, there is no going back. They know a return to stability means a death sentence if they are lucky, and years or torture and humiliation if they are not.

But there have been few reports of the Basij or IRGC members turning on each other or fleeing the regime. Until underlings begin to bite the hand that feeds, a second Iranian Revolution to be a distant hope.

If that does happen, civil war may follow. The provinces of Kurdistan and Baluchistan could quickly become separatist, with any conflict there likely to spill over into neighbouring Iraq and Pakistan.

In Syria, a brutal civil war saw millions killed only for the same regime to remain after 10 years of killing. Afghanistan is back under control of the Taliban, and Iraq — with the possible exception of quasi-independent Kurdistan — is poorer and more violent than before US military intervention.

Avoiding a similar outcome in Iran, should the regime collapse, will be challenging. The dilemma is one of the reasons the US has so far refrained from lending more vocal support to the protesters.

Could a Shah return? Unlikely. Few figures have emerged to lead the protest movement. Hamed Esmailion, an author whose family died in the Flight PS752 crash — a civilian plane shot down by the IRGC in a knee jerk reaction against the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, is seen as something of a spiritual leader.

Masih Alinejad, a journalist recently targeted by Iranian agents, also finds herself as an unlikely figurehead.

But both of these figures, and others like them, reside outside of Iran. The IRGC has crushed rebellion to the point where only a decentralised protest movement can threaten them.

A double edged sword, the protests have no leaders that the Guards can target in order to quell the chaos, but it also leaves them without a stable alternative to the current government.

Descenters within the regime know this. Moderate or hardliner, they ultimately drink from the same well, one they will protect at all costs until the last drop.

But the IRGC will not last forever. As the 1979 Revolution overthrew the Shah, Ruhollah Khomeini was flown in to take control — where he was met with ardent supporters waiting to install a new government.

A repeat of such a regime change, with Western allies willing to lend support to a democratic transition, would not be impossible.

Each day the protests continue, the cracks become ever more vivid. The passing of the second Supreme Leader of Iran will be the true test of how solid its foundations are.