Once upon a time, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) strutted around the Middle East like it owned the place. Armed with ideological zeal, proxy militias, and a state-sponsored chip on its shoulder, it built a shadow empire fueled by fear, oil money, and anti-Western slogans.
But now? It’s looking more like a paper tiger whose claws have been clipped—burned by battlefield losses, outmaneuvered by its enemies, and increasingly abandoned by a population that’s more interested in Wi-Fi and decent groceries than chants of “Death to America.”
Let’s be clear: the IRGC wasn’t some noble revolutionary force defending freedom. It was a Frankenstein creation of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, built specifically to keep the mullahs in power and silence anyone who dared dream of democracy or wear the wrong kind of headscarf.
It grew into a parallel military with its own navy, aerospace command, business empire, and—naturally—its own intelligence agency. Basically, it became the regime’s iron fist, slapping down dissent at home and stirring chaos abroad.
And chaos was indeed the product. The IRGC exported terror like it was a national industry—arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up Assad in Syria, funding Hamas in Gaza, and sending rockets through any open door. It tried to position Iran as the head of some Shiite crescent of power. But what do they have to show for it now?
Thanks to a brutal mix of U.S. and Israeli strikes—not to mention their own arrogance—the empire is unraveling. Hezbollah is limping. Hamas is shattered. Syria is slipping further out of Iran’s grip. The nuclear infrastructure and missile sites? Bombed. And the dream of a regional deterrent force? Toast, according to Dr. Afshon Ostovar, who’s been watching this horror show long enough to call it like it is.
And while the IRGC still clutches the reins of power in Tehran, they’re feeling the squeeze. Sanctions, cyberattacks, and a tanking economy have dried up the money spigot. Their beloved front companies are being sniffed out and sanctioned. Their missiles are missing targets—or getting destroyed before they even leave the ground. Their proxies? They’re either on the run or six feet under.
But here’s the kicker: the IRGC won’t just roll over. That’s not how authoritarian regimes survive. When external chaos stops working, they pivot inward. That means more repression, more surveillance, more moral police, and more prison cells for women who want to breathe free. Because it’s easier to crush students and protesters than to rebuild an entire terror network with a crippled budget and international isolation.
🇮🇷💀🇮🇱 In Iran, military and political leaders previously declared “killed” by Israel are reappearing alive
▪️ General Esmail Qaani, commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force and successor to Qasem Soleimani (who was killed by the U.S. in 2020), appeared publicly at a “Victory… pic.twitter.com/dcVKAOHCP9
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) June 28, 2025
And make no mistake—this regime isn’t going anywhere fast. Autocracies like Iran’s don’t just disappear when the going gets tough. They get nastier. Venezuela and Cuba have been circling the drain for decades and still cling to power. Iran, backed by buddies like China and Russia, will do the same. It’ll tighten its grip on its own people and maybe dress it up with a few slogans about resisting imperialism or preserving “Islamic values”—whatever that’s supposed to mean these days.
The threat of the Islamic regime in Iran is not exclusively “over there.”
It is also right here.
And it is one more reason that immigration enforcement is essential.
Abbasi runs an IRGC think tank in Tehran. Its name:
The Center for Borderless Security Doctrinal Analysis. https://t.co/q1EXHYHlos
— Michael Johns🇺🇸 (@michaeljohns) July 2, 2025
Sure, there are whispers of reform. Some elements inside Iran’s leadership supposedly want to chart a different path—something more like Vietnam or China. You know, authoritarian capitalism where people get just enough freedom to stay quiet. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The younger generation of Guardsmen may ditch the religious zealotry, but they’ve still been raised on a steady diet of anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda. They’ve fought in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon—not exactly a résumé for peaceful reform.
“Joe Biden literally unfroze $7 billion that we had seized from the Iranian government. He turned the key and said, ‘We’re going to trust you, Iran, not to create a nuclear weapon, not to fund the IRGC, not to kill Americans, not to launch a war in Israel via Hamas, Hezbollah.'” pic.twitter.com/iCT0sqvIG4
— Shawn Ryan (@ShawnRyan762) September 2, 2024
So here we are. The IRGC is bruised but not broken, retreating but not defeated. It’s losing friends, losing ground, and maybe even losing its grip on the future—but it’s still got the guns, the prisons, and the ideology to hold the line. For now. Because as long as fear is cheaper than diplomacy and repression easier than reform, the IRGC will continue doing what it does best: dragging Iran deeper into isolation, one brutal crackdown at a time.
