The Iranian people have again had enough. Protests have erupted across the country in anger at the beating death of a 22-year-old woman detained by morality police for allegedly showing too much hair. Certainly, there is an irony when Western diplomats and journalists don headscarves in deference to Iranian culture, while Iranian women shed theirs, knowing they face detention, torture, and even death for defying the idea that isolated and corrupt octogenarian ayatollahs can define culture and how women should dress.
It is clear Iranians want change. Protests occur with increasing frequency and include Iranians from almost every social strata. Iranians have taken to the streets across the country to protest student crackdowns (1999), alleged soccer match-fixing (2001), working conditions (2005), election fraud (2009), the economy (2018-2019), the environment (2021), and now the treatment of women (2022). But if so many Iranians want change, why have protests not yet been successful?
The problem is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Islamic Republic has two militaries: The regular army is in charge of territorial defense, while the IRGC’s mission is to safeguard the revolution against enemies foreign or domestic. While generations of Western diplomats, academics, and activist-journalists became enamored with former President Mohammad Khatami’s “Dialogue of Civilizations,” muddle-through reform can never work in Iran because the IRGC defends the top leadership against the will of the people.
In 2007, the IRGC recognized that the Iranian people posed a far greater threat to the Islamic Republic than Israel, the United States, or any regional country. The IRGC reorganized to put one unit in every province with the charge of keeping local order. What remains an intelligence blind spot is whether the IRGC staffs its units with men native to the provinces in which they serve. The answer to that question would reveal whether ideology trumps kinship if given the order to fire on the crowds in the street. More broadly, while armchair analysts speak about hard-line and reform factions in politics, few have insight into how these and other divisions play out within the IRGC. While almost everyone will acknowledge the IRGC is not monolithic, with some true believers and others in it for the power and perks, few analysts can describe where specific IRGC officers fall on the spectrum the way they do with politicians.
The West also sees the IRGC primarily as a military threat. But the group’s greatest impact inside Iran is economic. Analysts estimate IRGC-owned conglomerates control up to 40% of Iran’s gross domestic product. The guards dominate industries such as oil, construction, manufacturing, electronics, and large-scale import-export. What this means practically is that sanctions relief, oil sales, and Western investment in Iran do not help the Iranian people but instead subsidize their oppressors. This has been a consistent logical problem with the West’s diplomatic approach to Iran. Ignoring the financial stranglehold the IRGC maintains over the country is the reason why trade has never brought reform.
So what should the West do?
There simply can be no substantive reform, let alone freedom, without first tackling the IRGC. Just as doctors use chemotherapy to starve a tumor, sanctions and asset seizures against the entirety of the IRGC’s economic infrastructure and overseas investments are necessary to shrink its influence. Empowering independent trade unions will also weaken the IRGC.
While some IRGC henchmen might beat protesters in the streets, they, too, have families. When I lived in Iran, I visited neighborhoods of Western Tehran home to many IRGC families. Many felt betrayed by the same regime that Iranians are now protesting. The regime threw young Revolutionary Guards into the Iran-Iraq War and then abandoned them when injuries retired them. As one possible response, the U.S. Navy might send a hospital ship to Dubai and offer free medical care to IRGC veterans. Either they come — and implode the organization from within — or the regime prevents them and further antagonizes a key constituency.
Certainly, no magic formula exists. The only certainty is that merely wishing away the IRGC web of control will condemn both political reform and the ability of protesters to succeed.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
